
rins^ u5'd:?i 



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COBXRIGHT DEPGSrr. 



RIGHT ABOVE RACE 



RIGHT ABOVE RACE 



BY 

OTTO H. KAHN 



"We will not permit the blood in our 
veins to drown the conscience in our 
breast. We will heed the call of honor 
beyond the call of race." 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1918 



-yi^ 



Copyright, 1918, by 
The Centuey Co. 



Published, April, 1918 



MAY -3 iSiS- 

©CI.A495955 



FOREWORD 

I have seen no other utterances so 
clearly setting forth the attitude of the 
German-born American as those that 
are here presented. Mr. Kahn writes 
with a knowledge of German condi- 
tions, — the ambitions, the capacities and 
the history of the German people. He 
drives home the strength of the Ameri- 
can position in a manner that makes an 
irrefutable argument for the righteous- 
ness of this nation's attitude. His view 
is more than American, it is interna- 
tional, a view that looks to the conse- 
quences to the world if the things done 
by Germany and the spirit which now 
controls her go without check. Indeed, 



Foreword 

he speaks on behalf of a new and better 
Germany with which the world may live 
in concord. 

Franklin K. Lane, 

Secretary of the Interior. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Letter to a German 3 

Americans of German Origin and the 

War ,65 

Prussianized Germany ..... 77 

The Poison Growth of Prussianism . 91 

Frenzied Liberty 131 

The Myth of "A Rich Man's War" . 151 



RIGHT ABOVE RACE 



LETTER TO A GERMAN 

This letter was written in June, 1915, to a 
prominent business man in Germany. A few of 
the passages contained in the letter as here given 
are taken from an earlier letter (March, 1915) 
written to the same person. 

The original letters were in German. The 
following translation was made by the author. 



RIGHT ABOVE RACE 

LETTER TO A GERMAN 

New York, June 28, 1915. 
Dear X. : 

Many thanks for your very interest- 
ing letter of April 27th. The spirit 
which animates Germany is indeed a 
great and mighty one. It is a spirit of 
unity and brotherhood among her peo- 
ple, of willing sacrifice and heroic striv- 
ing, coupled with the passionate convic- 
tion and faith that her cause is just and 
righteous, that it must and will win, and 
that not only is victory a necessity for 
national existence, but that in its train 
it will bring blessings to the whole of 
the universe. 

Wherever and whenever in the 
world's history such a spirit — born of 



4 Right Above Race 

the stirring of the profoundest depths 
of national or religious feeling — ^has 
manifested itself, it has invariably been 
attended by a more or less marked fa- 
naticism among the people concerned; 
by a condition of mind easily compre- 
hensible as a psychological phenomenon, 
yet acutely prejudicial to the ability to 
preserve an objective point of view, and 
to arrive at an impartial judgment. 

It is but natural that in the atmos- 
phere which surrounds you and under 
existing circumstances, a man even of 
such sober, clear and independent men- 
tality as yourself, should think and feel 
in the way manifested by your letter. 
Even if it were in my power, I would 
not try at this time to shake your faith 
and patriotic determination. Since, 
however, you ask me to continue this ex- 
change of opinions, I will endeavor fur- 
ther to make plain to you my ideas as to 



Letter to a German 5 

this most deplorable and accursed war. 

The views I am expressing are, I be- 
lieve, the views as well of the great ma- 
jority of thinking people in America. 
And I would remind you that America 
as a whole, by reason of the racial com- 
position of her population, is essentially 
free from national prejudice or racial 
bias. With her many millions of in- 
habitants of German origin, her dispo- 
sition could not be anti-German in the 
ordinary course of affairs — and indeed 
never was so before the war. 

With her millions of Jews and her 
liberal tendencies she cannot be pro- 
Russian. With her historical develop- 
ment in the course of which her only 
serious wars have been fought against 
Great Britain (which country, more- 
over, during certain critical periods in 
the Civil War between North and 
South, evidenced inclination to favor the 



6 Right Above Race 

South and thus aroused long continu- 
ing resentment in the Northern States) 
and for many other reasons, her dispo- 
sition cannot be that of an English par- 
tisan — and was not so before the war. 

The predominant sentiment of the 
American people in the Boer War was 
anti-English ; in the Balkan War their 
sympathies were pro-Turkish; in the 
Italian-Turkish War, anti-Italian; in 
the Russo-Japanese War, pro-Japa- 
nese, although it was fully realized that 
from the point of view of America's 
material and national interests, the 
strengthening of Japan was hardly de- 
sirable. 

It may sound to you very improbable, 
yet it is none the less true that America, 
of all the great nations, is probably the 
one least swayed by eagerness to attain 
material advantage for herself through 
her international policies. I do not 



Letter to a German 7 

claim that this arises necessarily from 
any particular virtue in her people. It 
may be rather the result of her geo- 
graphical and economic situation. 

America returned to China the in- 
demnity growing out of the Boxer Re- 
bellion. To Spain, conquered and 
helpless, she paid, entirely of her own 
free will, $20,000,000 for the Philip- 
pines. She refused to annex Cuba. 
In spite of strong provocation she ab- 
stained from taking Mexico. 

Although not a land as yet of the 
highest degree of culture, America is a 
land of high and genuine humanitarian- 
ism and of a certain naive idealism. 

I hear your ironic rejoinder, "and out 
of pure humanitarianism, you supply 
arms to our enemies, and thus prolong 
the war" 

The answer lies in the accentuation of 
the last four words, which can only 



8 Right Above Race 

mean that, but for the American supply 
of arms, the Allies, from lack of am- 
munition, would speedily be defeated, 
i, e,j America is to co-operate in preserv- 
ing for that country which has most 
extensively and actively prepared for 
war, the full and lasting advantage of 
that preparation. 

That would put a premium on war 
preparations — on an armed and there- 
fore necessarily precarious peace — since 
it is but human nature that, given a 
difference which he considers serious 
enough for ground for a quarrel, a man 
armed to the teeth would be less in- 
clined to settle the matter peaceably 
than one who is not so well prepared for 
a fight. 

Apart from this, the German com- 
plaint about the prolongation of the 
war through the American supply of 
arms is proof in itself that the refusal of 



Letter to a German 9 

such supplies would constitute a posi- 
tive act of partiality in favor of Ger- 
many. 

And the great majority of Americans 
are convinced that the ruling powers of 
Germany and Austria, though not per- 
haps the people themselves, are re- 
sponsible for the outbreak of the war; 
that they have sinned against humanity 
and justice; that at least France and 
England did not want war; that there- 
fore its advent found them in a com- 
paratively unprepared state, and that it 
would constitute a decided, serious and 
unjustifiable action of far-reaching ef- 
fect against the Allies if America were 
to put an embargo on war munitions — 
especially so in view of the fact that as 
a direct consequence of the treaty-de- 
fying invasion of Belgium you are in 
possession of the Belgian arms factories 
and iron mines and of about 75% of all 



10 Right Above Race 

the ore-producing capacity of France. 

For neutrals to supply war materials 
to belligerents is an ancient, unques- 
tioned right, recognized by international 
law and frequently practiced by your- 
selves. To alter, during the course of a 
war, a practice sanctioned by the law of 
nations and hitherto always followed, 
would constitute a flagrant breach of 
neutrality, in that it would necessarily 
help one side and harm the other. 

The fact that at one time we forbade 
the export of arms to Mexico aff'ords no 
argument in favor of the German con- 
tention, for there it was not a case of 
war between nations, but of civil war. 
There was also the danger that such 
arms might eventually be used against 
America herself, given the possibility 
that intervention by us in Mexico might 
later on become necessary. 

Commissions from Germany for the 



Letter to a German 11 

supply of arms would have been as ac- 
ceptable to our factories as were those 
from the Allies. It is not America's 
fault if the German fleet does not break 
through the British cordon and open 
the way for sea conmiunication with 
Germany. The superiority of the Brit- 
ish fleet and the resulting consequences 
must have been known to Germany be- 
fore she permitted the outbreak of this 
horrible war. She has no more right to 
make a grievance of these consequences 
than the Allies have a right to complain 
of Germany's superior preparedness 
and the greater perfection of her in- 
struments of war. 

To believe American pubhc opinion 
influenced by the profits which come to 
this country from the supply of arms, is 
to misunderstand completely the Amer- 
ican mode of thought and feeling. 
Moreover these profits go to very few 



12 Right Above Race 

pockets, and public opinion here being 
anything but unduly complacent to- 
wards large corporations and capitalists 
is by no means inclined to view with 
favor the gathering in of these huge 
profits by a very limited number of in- 
dividuals and concerns. 

You quote with approval General 
von Schlieffen's remark that "in war, 
after all, the only thing that matters is 
those silly old victories." 

You would surely not say that in the 
individual's daily struggle for existence 
or in competitive industrial strife, "the 
only thing that matters" is success. 
Rather you would be the first to grant 
as you have always demonstrated in 
your acts, that there are certain ethical 
limitations laid down by the conscience 
and the moral conceptions of himianity, 
which must be respected in the struggle 
for success, however keen, even though 



Letter to a German 13 

the very existence of the individual and 
the maintenance of wife and child be at 
stake. 

Schlieffen's utterance, in the meaning 
which your quotation gives it, throws 
overboard everything that civilization 
and the humanitarian progress of cen- 
turies has accomplished towards lessen- 
ing the cruelty, the hatred and the suf- 
fering engendered by war, and towards 
protecting non-combatants, as far as 
possible, from its terrors. It is tanta- 
mount to the doctrine of the fanati- 
cal Jesuit: "The end justifies the 



means." 



And it is something akin to this very 
doctrine which Germany has made her 
own and applied in her conduct of this 
war as she has done in none of her 
previous wars. The conviction that 
everything^ literally everything, which 
tends to insure victory is permitted to 



14 Right Above Race 

heVj, and indeed called for, has now evi- 
dently assumed the power of a national 
obsession. Thus, the violation of inno- 
cent Belgium in defiance of solemn 
treaty; the unspeakable treatment in- 
flicted on her people ; the bombardment, 
without warning, of open places (which 
Germany was the first to practice) ; the 
destruction of great monuments of art 
which belonged to all humankind, as in 
Rheims, and Louvain; the Lusitania 
horror, the strewing of mines broadcast, 
the use of poisonous gases causing death 
by torture or incurable disease ; the tak- 
ing of hostages ; the arbitrary imposition 
of monetary indemnities and penalties, 
and so forth. It is these facts that the 
non-combatant nations charge against 
Germany, and quite apart from the re- 
sponsibility for the war, it is in them 
that may be found the main reason why 
public opinion in neutral countries has 



Letter to a German 15 

more and more turned against Ger- 
many as the war has continued. 

I say "innocent Belgium," for it is 
entirely evident that the Belgian-Eng- 
lish pourparlers, of which Germany 
discovered documentary evidence, re- 
lated merely to the eventuality of Ger- 
many's violating Belgian neutrality and 
therefore in no way constituted a re- 
linquishment of neutrality on Belgium's 
part. In so far as these pourparlers 
did not keep strictly within these limits 
(manifestly as a result of excessive zeal 
on the part of the English military at- 
tache in question) they were formally 
and categorically rejected and dis- 
avowed, by both the Belgian and Eng- 
lish Governments. This is shown by 
official papers which have been pub- 
lished. It cannot be doubted that these 
proceedings of disavowal were entirely 
bona fide, for they took place at a time 



16 Right Above Race 

and under circumstances such that no 
one could possibly have imagined that 
the correspondence evidencing them 
would ever see the light of day. Inas- 
much as you mention these Anglo- 
Belgian pourparlers as among the rea- 
sons justifying Germany's invasion of 
Belgium, it is worth pointing out that 
this treaty defying invasion was perpe- 
trated before Germany had discovered 
the existence of the documents which 
evidenced that such pourparlers had 
taken place. 

Germany's reasoning that she was 
compelled to take the initiative in vio- 
lating the treaty of neutrality in order 
to avoid the imminent danger that Eng- 
land and France would do so first and 
thereupon advance troops against her 
through Belgium, is, even if such rea- 
soning were morally admissible, no valid 
argument; for, only a few days before, 



Letter to a German 17 

England and France had solemnly 
pledged themselves in the face of the 
whole world to respect Belgium's neu- 
trality. 

If, as you believe, England had been 
planning for years to attack Germany 
via Belgium, would she not then have 
had in readiness an invading force some- 
where near adequate for such an under- 
taking? Instead she had the mere 
bagatelle of 75,000 or 100,000 men, 
which in the first months of the war 
actually constituted her whole available 
continental fighting force. 

To any one of unprejudiced judg- 
ment there remains, therefore, no choice 
. but the conclusion that Germany's viola- 
tion of Belgium did not even have the 
excuse of being a measure of self-de- 
fence, but, as the Chancellor in effect 
admitted in his first speech on the sub- 
ject in the Reichstag, was undertaken 



18 Bight Above Race 

simply because "in war the only thing 
that matters is those silly old victories." 

Not, as you say, in obedience to Eng- 
land's command (what power had Eng- 
land either to command or enforce her 
commands?), but from a compelling 
impulse of national honor did Belgium 
oppose the German breach of neutrality 
with force of arms, though it would 
evidently have been to her material in- 
terest to comply with Germany's sum- 
mons or at any rate to offer merely 
nominal resistance. 

Holland and Switzerland would have 
done the same thing under similar cir- 
cumstances, as would any other self- 
respecting nation. Moreover, what 
weight could Belgium attach to Ger- 
many's promise of immunity in case she 
yielded, when at the very moment Ger- 
many, by her own act, was demonstrat- 
ing but too clearly how little she con- 



Letter to a German 19 

sidered herself bound by her promise or 
indeed by a solemn international treaty? 

What the Germans have accom- 
plished on the battlefields, as well as 
within their own country, is proof of 
such great national qualities, that it 
compels the tribute of admiration, even 
from your enemies. These qualities 
would indeed have gone far to 
justify her claim to hegemony, had they 
not been linked unfortunately — at least 
among your ruling classes and intellec- 
tual leaders — with ways of thought and 
action which are anti-humanitarian, op- 
pressive and generally intolerable to the 
rest of the world. 

The theory of "frightfulness" in the 
conduct of warfare which Germany now 
preaches and practices is no new dis- 
covery. On the contrary it is a very 
ancient one — so old, in fact, that long 
ago it had come to be discarded and 



20 Bight Above Race 

superseded in European warfare and 
passed into the limbo of forgotten 
things. There, until resurrected by 
your countrymen, it lay for generations, 
along with much else which the human 
race had overcome and left behind in 
the progress of culture and humanity — 
a progress achieved by strenuous toil, 
sacrifices and suffering in the course of 
many centuries. 

Such words and ideas are met with 
contempt and derision by your spokes- 
men and termed mere phrases and senti- 
mentality. If these are mere 'phrases 
then the whole upward struggle of the 
world for endless years past has been 
based upon and aiming at phrases and 
sentimentality, 

I read recently an article in a German 
paper written by one of your professors 
of international law, in which he main- 
tained, evidently quite unconscious of 



Letter to a German 21 

the incredible monstrosity of his logic, 
that, because the Russians in their in- 
vasion of East Prussia had acted like 
barbarians, you therefore had the un- 
questioned right, as a measure of re- 
prisal, to bombard and destroy Oxford 
and Cambridge ! 

And what have you gained from your 
"f rightfulness"? Your victories have 
been due to quite other qualities. By 
your "f rightfulness" you have steeled 
your enemies to the utmost limit of 
sacrifice; you have embittered neutral 
opinion; you have disappointed and 
grieved your friends and "sown drag- 
on's teeth," the offspring of which will 
arise against you many years even after 
the conclusion of peace. 

How differently would you be judged 
now if you had tempered your mighty 
power with mercy and self-restraint ; if 
with the consciousness and use of su- 



22 Right Above Race 

perior strength and ability you had 
coupled chivalry and generosity! 

You say that Germany is the only 
great power which has kept the peace 
for forty-four years, and made no con- 
quest of territory of any kind by force 
of arms. It is pertinent to recall in 
reference to this statement, that in the 
course of these forty-four years Ger- 
many virtually by force has taken a 
strategically important piece of China, 
waged war against the Hereros and an- 
nexed colonies in Africa and in the Pa- 
cific (receiving in exchange for one of 
them the strategically most valuable is- 
land of Heligoland). Yet, speaking 
generally, the world is bound to recog- 
nize with gratitude and admiration that 
from 1871 to 1914 Germany has re- 
frained from using her enormous mili- 
tary power in attempts at conquest. 

Has she had cause to complain of the 



Letter to a German 23 

results of this wise and farseeing policy? 

During that comparatively short 
period of time she had grown more pow- 
erful than any other country. In the 
well-being of her people, in her wealth 
and prestige she had advanced and 
flourished as no other nation. Her in- 
dustries, her merchant marine had 
brought her conquest and triumph un- 
equalled in the world's economic his- 
tory, which find a parallel only in the 
wonderful military achievements of the 
Napoleonic era. 

Without firing a gun she had turned 
Holland and Belgium practically 
into German dependencies. She had 
achieved predominance in Turkey and 
established a firm footing in Asia Minor. 
Her influence in South America and 
Asia was increasing by leaps and 
bounds. Even in the British colonies 
the victorious efficiency of the German 



24 Right Above Race 

commercial conquerors was making it- 
self felt more and more. 

And as to this newly discovered naval 
militarism of England which, you say, 
''is seeking to force England's will upon 
the whole world by the force of her 
mighty fleet," what has it ever done to 
bar the way to your commerce? Ab- 
solutely nothing. A few days ago I 
read a letter of an American traveler, 
from which I quote the following ex- 
tracts : 

"Not many years ago I sat on the club ver- 
anda at Singapore and counted twenty-five fun- 
nels of a single German steamer line. From 
Singapore I went to North Borneo; there was 
but one line^, a German, and that line carried 
the British mail. Later I went to Siam from 
Singapore. It was on a steamer of this same 
German line, carrying British mail. There was 
no other. Thence I went to Hongkong by the 
same excellent German line. Later I went to 
Australia — it was by one of this same line. To 
Java and the Eastern Archipelago, to Penang 
— ^it was always this vast German company. 



Letter to a German 25 

doing not only all the German, but the British 
mail service as well. The German traders, with 
whom I mixed freely, marveled at the infantile 
generosity with which Great Britain opened all 
her ports to German enterprise, although long- 
headed people shook their heads at the thought 
of German skippers having a better acquaint- 
ance with British waters than their own people. 

"Nowhere in the British colonial world have 
I found the slightest evidence of commercial 
monopoly and certainly no favoring of English- 
men at the expense of Germans. Even in India 
the German commercial traveler has roamed at 
will and driven Englishmen out of business 
under the very noses of the Calcutta Council. 

**In the Imperial German colonies, on the 
other hand, competing English traders have 
been treated to a systematic course of petty of- 
ficial restrictions so vexatious that finally they 
have given up the attempt to do business under 
German conditions. When I was in German 
New Guinea this official persecution went so far 
that a British trading steamer was even for- 
bidden to get water in order to force it to aban- 
don trade with the natives of that neighbor- 
hood. 

"Some British colonies, it is true, do now dis- 
criminate in favor of the mother country, but the 
colonies who do that are self-governing and 
therefore beyond the mother country's control in 



26 Right Above Race 

economic matters, like Canada. But in so-called 
Crown colonies like Hongkong, the German 
trader has the same advantage as any other/' 

England has not abused her power at 
sea, at least since the eighteenth cen- 
tury, any more than you, previous to 
this present war, have abused your 
power on land. Not only has she not 
stood in the way of your development, 
but on the contrary she has given you 
fair and free access to her markets, with 
unparalleled liberality. 

That England should now make 
every endeavor to carry on a strict sea 
blockade against Germany and should 
do so in a manner which takes account 
of the existing circumstances and novel 
instruments of naval warfare, is, in the 
opinion of our leading lawyers, her per- 
fect right, as far at least as it is a mat- 
ter only between her and Germany. 
In the same way the North, during the 



Letter to a German 27 

four years of the American Civil War, 
did all in her power compatible with 
the law of nations to prevent, both di- 
rectly and indirectly, export and im- 
port traffic through Southern harbors. 

It is true that dissatisfaction has been 
caused in this country by the interfer- 
ence of England with American com- 
merce. In fact such dissatisfaction is 
on the increase and is likely to lead in 
the early future to a vigorous protest 
on the part of our Government. But 
the objections to England's practice in 
no wise depend on any idea of ques- 
tioning the right under international 
law of a complete and effective block- 
ade. 

To call this perfectly natural and 
legitimate and frequently practiced 
measure of warfare "a war of starva- 
tion" against women and children is a 
good deal of an exaggeration. Though 



28 Right Above Race 

inconvenienced, you are very far from 
the danger of starvation. Indeed, all 
your spokesmen not only admit this fact 
but defiantly proclaim it. 

That against that blockade as well as 
for the destruction of English commerce 
you are making use of your amazingly 
perfected submarines appears to me en- 
tirely justified, so long as in that use 
you keep within the limits of legitimate 
warfare. Nor do I deny that England, 
in certain respects, has arbitrarily and 
it seems rather fatuously interfered 
with the rights of neutrals ; that she has 
employed against you some irritating 
measures of petty and apparently pur- 
poseless chicanery and given you cause 
for resentment by certain vindictive and 
perhaps unfair provisions and proce- 
dures enacted at the very start of the 
war against German firms and German 
interests within English jurisdiction. 



Letter to a German 29 

It must also, I believe, be admitted 
that you were justified in looking upon 
some of the boastful edicts of Winston 
Churchill, with reference to the conduct 
of English merchant vessels, as provo- 
cations which gave you legitimate 
ground for retaliation within recognized 
limitations. 

But that Germany should have used 
these provocations and this phrase of 
"starvation warfare," as a basis for re- 
prisals which actually do constitute 
Warfare against women and children, is 
a blow in the face to the world's con- 
science. 

Against England's infringements of 
the strict limits of neutral rights and 
against the subjecting of neutrals to 
certain unjust, irritating and rather 
senseless annoyances, America has not 
failed to protest. She has in several 
cases received satisfaction and accept- 



30 Right Above Race 

able assurances. She should, and, I 
have no doubt, she will insist firmly on 
her rights in the cases still under dis- 
cussion. But — and that makes the 
vast difference between the English and 
German infractions of the rights of neu- 
trals — in no single case have such acts 
on the part of England involved the 
sacrifice of a human life. 

You say that Germany is not re- 
sponsible for the war. It is neverthe- 
less a fact that it was Germany who first 
declared war. Perhaps it would have 
come even if not declared by Germany, 
but in that "perhaps" lies a fearful bur- 
den of responsibility. 

You speak of the vast *'Austro- 
German inferiority" in fighting men, as 
compared to France and Russia, which 
you had to counteract by rapidity and 
initiative of proceeding. 

First, this inferiority of your 120 



Letter to a German 31 

millions to the Franco-Russian 200 
millions (the English, at that time, 
could not have entered into your reck- 
oning) is not such a "vast" one, even 
on paper, when one considers how many 
millions of the Russians could not for 
many months be included in the reck- 
oning, in consequence of the huge dis- 
tances separating them from the scene 
of action. 

Secondly, you had the enormous 
advantage of strategic railroads, which 
the Russians lacked. 

Thirdly, you and the Austrians oc- 
cupying contiguous territory and hold- 
ing the inner lines were able to move 
your troops from East to West, and 
vice versa, as occasion demanded, while 
the Russians and French were separated 
and had to fight on the outer lines ; and 

Fourthly, every one knows that in 
modern warfare far less depends on the 



32 Right Above Race 

number of men than on preparation, 
leadership and ammunition. And that 
in these respects the Russians certainly, 
and at the outset also the French, la- 
bored under a "vast inferiority" is not 
open to question. 

It cannot be admitted therefore that 
the fact of the Russian mobilization 
made it a necessity for you to precipi- 
tate war, especially on the very day 
when Austria, who was in a far more 
exposed position than you, declared her- 
self ready at last, notwithstanding the 
Russian mobilization, to enter into di- 
rect diplomatic discussion with Russia. 

If Germany had waited but three 
days after that declaration by her ally, 
before delivering her ultimatum to 
Russia, either the war would have been 
avoided altogether, or Russia would 
have had to face the world as the ag- 
gressor, with all the forces of what Bis- 



Letter to a German 33 

marck termed "imponderabilia" against 
her. And it would be an insult to Ger- 
many's efficiency to question that she 
could have found measures short of 
rushing into war, to meet and offset for 
another few days the menace of Russian 
mobilization — apart from the fact that 
there is some reason to suspect that this 
Russian mobilization on the German 
frontier was deliberately provoked by 
certain Machiavellian manoeuvers in 
Berlin. 

On the 30th and 31st of July, respec- 
tively. Sir Edward Grey telegraphed as 
follows to the English ambassador in 
Berhn for transmission to the Imperial 
Chancellor : 

**. . . You should speak to the Chancellor 
in the above sense, and add most earnestly that 
one way of maintaining good relations with 
England and Germany is that they should con- 
tinue to work together to preserve the peace 
of Europe. If we succeed in this object, the 



34 Right Above Race 

mutual relations of Germany and England will, 
I believe, be ipso facto improved and strength- 
ened. For that object his Majesty's Govern- 
ment will work in that way with all sincerity 
and good will. . . . 

"And I will say this: If the peace of Eu- 
rope can be preserved, and the present crisis 
safely passed, my own endeavor will he to pro- 
mote s<ome arrangement to which Germany could 
be a party, by which she could be assured that 
no aggressive or hostile policy would be pur- 
sued against her or her allies by France, Russia 
and ourselves, jointly or separately. I have 
desired this and worked for it, as far as I could, 
through the last Balkan crisis and, Germany 
having a corresponding object, our relations 
sensibly improved. The idea has hitherto 
been too Utopian to form the subject of definite 
proposals, but if this present crisis, so much 
more acute than any that Europe has gone 
through for generations, be safely passed, I am 
hopeful that the relief and reaction which will 
follow may make possible some more definite 
rapproachement between the Powers than has 
been possible hitherto. . . . 

'^I said to the German Ambassador this morn- 
ing that if Germany could get any reasonable 
proposal put forward which made it clear that 
Germany and Austria were striving to preserve 
European peace, and that Russia and France 



Letter to a German 35 

would he unreasonable if they rejected it, I 
would support it at St. Petersburg and Paris, 
and go to the length of saying that if Rus^sia 
and France would not accept it, his Majesty's 
Government would have nothing more to do with 
the consequences; otherwise^ I told the German 
Ambassador, that if France became involved we 
should be drawn in." 

Is this the language of one seeking a 
quarrel? Why did not Germany act 
upon the suggestions put forth so ur- 
gently, ringing so manifestly true and 
bearing so evidently the stamp of good 
faith? Why was the calamity of war 
thrust upon the world in such hot haste, 
that you did not even previously in- 
form, far less consult, your then allies, 
the Italians, in spite of the provisions of 
the Triple Alliance? 

Is it not proved by declarations of 
Giolotti — certainly no enemy to Ger- 
many — ^before the Italian Parliament 
some six months back, that Austria 



36 Right Above Race 

wanted to make war upon Servia as 
much as two years ago, that is to say, 
long before the assassination of the 
Austrian heir-apparent afforded the 
pretext for an ultimatum which spelled 
war? I know sufficient of the senti- 
ment prevailing in England and France 
before the war, as well as of the tenden- 
cies of the political leaders and other 
leading men in those countries, to be ab- 
solutely positive that, apart from a few 
individuals given to noisemaking, but 
not possessing weight or real influence, 
the people and the Governments of 
France and England were very far in- 
deed from w^anting war. 

On the other hand, I agree with you 
in believing that the Pan-Slavist party 
in Russia did plan to bring on war. 
However, they did not want it yet and 
it is altogether doubtful whether they 
would have succeeded in their design 



Letter to a German 37 

had they been met by a firm, wise and 
conciliatory policy on the part of Ger- 
many and Austria. 

These opponents (the Russians), hy 
themselves, as results thus far have 
shown, and as seemed evident in ad- 
vance to sober observers, you need never 
to have considered as your peers in a 
military sense. 

Rather than take the awful respon- 
sibility of initiating war, and thus 
uniting England, France and Russia 
wholeheartedly against you, you could 
well have afforded, in calm confidence 
in your superior efficiency and prepara- 
tion, to take the lesser risk of letting the 
Russians come on whenever, in fatuous 
arrogance, they might have believed 
themselves strong enough to tackle you 
and Austria. 

In an offensive war, undertaken by 
Russia, France would have joined, if at 



38 Right Above Race 

all, only half-heartedly, and with her 
public opinion strongly divided. No 
English Government, however jingo- 
militarist, could have obtained the 
sanction of Parliament to take part in 
such a war. Your ally, Italy, would in 
that case not have forsaken you. Pub- 
lic opinion and the moral support of 
the neutral nations would have been 
strongly with you. You would as- 
suredly, under such circumstances, 
have given the Russians a bad beating, 
and the world in general would have re- 
joiced exceedingly at the aggressor's 
discomfiture. 

That the large majority of the people 
of Germany did not want war, I do not 
doubt, although {as was not the case 
in England and France) there has been 
in existence in your country for years a 
rather alarmingly active and influential 
party whose open aim was war, and 



Letter to a German 39 

particularly a reckoning with England. 

Many of your intellectuals and par- 
ticularly many of the teachers of your 
youth, had come to preach the deifica- 
tion of sheer might. They proclaimed 
with fanatical arrogance the doctrine 
that the German nation being the 
chosen people, superior to all others, 
was therefore not only permitted, but, 
indeed, called upon, to impose the bless- 
ings of its civilization and "Kultur" 
upon other countries, by force if neces- 
sary, and to help itself to such of their 
possessions as it deemed necessary for 
the fulfillment of its destiny. 

I believe it is not too much to say 
that that doctrine and the spirit which 
bred it are very much akin, in their in- 
tolerance, self-righteous assumption of 
a world-improving mission, lack of un- 
derstanding of and contemptuous dis- 
allowance for the differing viewpoints, 



40 Right Above Race 

qualities and methods of others, to the 
doctrines and the spirit that lay at the 
bottom of the religious wars throughout 
the long and evil years when Catholics 
and Protestants killed one another and 
wrought appalling bloodshed, destruc- 
tion and ruin, for the purpose of con- 
ferring upon their respective countries 
the blessings of "the true religion." 

Liberal press organs and calm-think- 
ing men in Germany frequently before 
the war expressed their disapproval of, 
and misgivings at such preachings and 
the tendencies and agitation of the 
jingo party, though naturally you now 
all stand together and have put aside 
for the time being the party differences 
and conflicting opinions and points of 
view which prevailed prior to the war. 

I agree with you in believing notwith- 
standing the machinations of the war 
party, that the Kaiser and the Chancel- 



Letter to a German 41 

lor, up to a certain fatal moment, when 
they yielded their judgments to others, 
meant, bona fide, to preserve peace. I 
am quite persuaded as well that the 
mass of the German people did not want 
war and are entirely honest in their 
practically unanimous belief that Ger- 
many is not responsible for the war, 
although, unfortunately, the facts prove 
the contrary. 

It is conceivable that you might have 
been justified in coming forward boldly 
and straightforwardly and saying to the 
Triple Entente : 

"We are 70 million strong. We have 
demonstrated to the world our capabili- 
ties in every department of human en- 
deavor and human achievement. We 
require (or, at least, our people believe, 
rightly or wrongly, that we require) 
wider territorial scope for our growth 
than we possess in our own country and 



42 Right Above Race 

in our colonies. We require, too, an 
assurance of greater security as to the 
conditions of our national existence 
and our economic development. 

"You have pre-empted the best part 
of the world. It is far more than you 
require. Either see that an appro- 
priate provision is made for us, or, fail- 
ing that, give us a free hand to conclude 
mutually agreeable arrangements with 
Belgium, Portugal or Holland with re- 
spect to their over-sea possessions. 

"You will then find us ready to con- 
clude an understanding with you, in 
order to ensure peace and to make an 
end, at least, to these continually re- 
curring alarms of war, which are wear- 
ing out the nerves and the purse of the 
whole world. To this end let us call a 
conference. Meanwhile, no one is to in- 
crease the armaments they at present 
possess, let alone mobilize. But if you 



Letter to a German 43 

are not willing to give us a fair show 
peaceably, then we warn you look out 
for trouble." 

In my opinion, such a warning would 
not have had to be translated into ac- 
tion, for in due course things were 
bound to come your way by the very 
force of cause and effect. With a little 
skill and tact and insight (which traits, 
as you will probably admit, have hardly 
been outstanding features of German 
diplomacy since Bismarck), together 
with a little patience, everything you 
could reasonably ask would have been 
yours in the course of the next ten or 
fifteen years. 

But if the Triple Entente had met a 
request in the nature of the foregoing 
with a non possumus, or had made 
no reasonably acceptable offer, and you, 
after fuial warning had resorted to the 
arbitrament of war, your case would 



44 Right Above Race 

have worn a very different aspect from 
the present one. Many unprejudiced 
men amongst neutral people would 
have looked upon your viewpoints and 
conduct as not devoid of justification, 
instead of turning away with disgust 
from the sophistries of .your writers, who 
seek to demonstrate that you poor in- 
nocent lambs were fallen upon in order 
to be dragged to the slaughter-house. 

As a matter of fact, however, it is my 
belief that such a declaration dehvered 
by you to the Triple Entente, firm and 
determined in spirit and meaning, but 
friendly and persuasive in language, 
would have led not to war, but to a 
lasting understanding. 

SUMMARY 

To sum up: 

1. Until ten years ago, England's 
relations with you were good — indeed 



Letter to a German 45 

more than good, as is shown, for in- 
stance, by the cession of Heligoland. 
If, as you assert, hate and envy and ill- 
will, because of Germany's phenomenal 
development, and of her increasing 
strength and push as a competitor in the 
markets of the world, had been the 
moving force in shaping England's at- 
titude towards you, the motive for hos- 
tile conduct would have existed at that 
time just as at present. 

As a matter of fact, England's senti- 
ment towards Germany changed only 
with your aggressive program of naval 
construction, and as a consequence of 
the manifestation in word, in writing 
and in deed, of certain alarming and 
menacing tendencies, to which, it is true, 
more significance and importance prob- 
ably were attached abroad than in 
Germany itself — more, perhaps, than 
they deserved. 



46 Right Above Race 

That program England came to con- 
sider, naturally, as directed mainly 
against herself and as a serious menace 
to her most vital interests and to the 
conditions of her very existence. 

Would not Germany have become 
uneasy had Russia suddenly announced 
a policy of concentrating an enormous 
fleet in the Baltic? (The parallel, 
though, is far from perfect, in that for 
you, sea power is not nearly as vital an 
element as it is and must be for Eng- 
land.) 

Your naval policy, together with the 
arguments which the German Govern- 
ment's spokesmen adduced for it, and 
the above-mentioned manifestations and 
agitations, caused very serious and last- 
ing apprehensions in England. They 
gradually drove her to the Entente with 
France, and through it, unfortunately 
perhaps, but necessarily, also with 



Letter to a German 47 

Russia, — not as an offensive, but as a 
defensive measure. 

Let me say, in parenthesis, that in 
the interest of England and France and 
of the peace of the world, I have always 
felt inclined to doubt the wisdom of this 
grouping, however comprehensible and 
natural it was under the circumstances. 
Likewise, I have always doubted the 
wisdom of the creation of your enor- 
mous fleet — a view which was shared 
by some of your best political thinkers 
and which appears to have been justi- 
fied, by results. 

2. The genesis of the war lay in the 
fixed idea by which Austria was pos- 
sessed, since her foreign Minister Aeh- 
renthal succeeded in reaping easy and 
questionable but profitable laurels some 
years ago, that she could and ought to 
adopt a ^'dashing" policy. There is 
nothing more dangerous than the foolish 



48 Bight Above Race 

and reckless daring of feebleness, when, 
as happens at times, it is suddenly seized 
with a mania for heroics. 

In fact, as I gleaned from a letter re- 
ceived here within a few days of the out- 
break of the war and originating from 
a particularly authoritative source in 
Vienna, Austria entirely failed to real- 
ize the portentous significance and the 
inevitable consequences of her unheard- 
of ultimatum to Serbia. 

She believed that she would be left 
undisturbed to play the conqueror at the 
expense of that poor little country. 
Unfortunately, Germany did not see fit 
to put a stop to that extremely danger- 
ous playing with fire. On the contrary, 
the German Ambassador in Vienna 
seems to have encouraged it, actively 
and deliberately. 

3. When finally the crisis had come, 



Letter to a German 49 

with all its terrible meaning, Austria's 
nerves, at the very last moment, began 
to give way. She wavered in the face 
of a world catastrophe. 

But your Junkers and other jingoes 
neither wavered nor hesitated. They 
saw in their grasp the opportunity for 
which they had been plotting these 
many years and they were not minded 
to let it escape them. They considered 
the moment pecuUarly propitious be- 
cause of the internal preoccupations of 
England and France. 

And they succeeded in sweeping the 
German Government off its feet as well 
as the sober and sensible thinking ma- 
jority of the German people. They 
succeeded in rushing your Government 
and people into the belief that the 
Russian mobilization signified a menace 
dangerous to Germany's very existence. 



50 Eight Above Race 

and that every day of delay in meeting 
that danger might mean disastrous eon- 
sequences. 

This was not the first time that an 
attempt had been made by that party 
to bring the Kaiser and his people sud- 
denly face to face with a situation which 
they meant should spell war — a war 
which they felt certain would end in a 
quick and decisive German victory. Of 
at least one flagrant example of such 
manoeuvering I have personal knowl- 
edge. 

That the jingo party, against what I 
believe to have been the tendencies of 
the Kaiser's and the Chancellor's poli- 
cies, thus succeeded at last in their 
fateful and atrocious design — although 
the manifest interests and, doubtless, 
the inclination of the masses of your 
people were for the maintenance of 
peace — is explainable only by the Ger- 



Letter to a German 51 

mans' amazing lack of understanding 
for the deeper qualities, sentiments, 
ideals, modes of thought and character- 
istics of other nations as distinguished 
from their outward peculiarities, meth- 
ods and habits. 

This lack of understanding doubly 
amazing in a people so intelligent and 
instructed and so successful in its com- 
mercial dealings with the rest of the 
world is strikingly exemplified in your 
complete mis judgment as to the co- 
hesive power of the British Empire and 
as to the loyalty of its component parts 
and subject races; by your gross under- 
estimate of France and by your general 
miscalculation as to how the peoples 
challenged by you would react to the 
supreme test of war. 

That Austria and Russia through 
their mobilizations and other measures 
originating from a mixture of bluff and 



52 Eight Above Race 

fear, managed to get each other into an 
utterly unreasoning state of nerves, is 
entirely comprehensible. They did not 
trust each other, and above all, they did 
not trust themselves, their own strength 
and preparedness. 

But Germany, in the knowledge of 
her powerful moral and military superi- 
ority, and of her incomparable war ma- 
chine, perfect and ready in every detail, 
could have, and should have dominated 
the confusion and danger of the situa- 
tion with the sang-froid and self-confi- 
dence born of strength, instead of al- 
lowing herself to be swept along by the 
sinister currents leading to an ocean of 
blood. 

And if Germany, with trembling 
Europe hanging on her words, had pro- 
claimed boldly "There shall be peace," 
and thus by her veto had saved the 
world from the curse of this war, she 



Letter to a German 53 

would not only have done a splendidly 
meritorious deed, unequalled in the 
world's history, which would have 
brought her immortal fame and would 
have been greeted by the joyous acclaim 
of all peoples, but she would have 
gained by that very act the uncontested 
leadership amongst the nations. From 
their gratitude for being freed from the 
nightmare of war's menace, she would 
readily have obtained (as intimated by 
Sir Edward Grey in his telegram) com- 
pliance with any reasonable demand she 
might have put forward for the exten- 
sion of the scope of her development 
and influence. 

4. Once the Entente existed it seems 
to me so obvious that England in an 
aggressive war waged by Germany and 
Austria against France and Russia was 
bound to throw in her lot with the latter 
country, that I was quite unable, at the 



54 Right Above Race 

time, to understand Germany's outburst 
of surprise and fury against England. 
Alliance or Entente, call it what you 
will — had England backed out in that 
crisis it would have been a miserable 
breach of faith on her part, by which 
she would have forfeited her place in the 
world's respect and which would have 
been bitterly resented by her former 
friends and left her completely isolated 
henceforth. 

Moreover, apart from all moral obli- 
gations and the compelling force of 
political considerations, she could have 
felt all the less tempted to enter into a 
separate agreement with Germany at 
that critical juncture and remain neu- 
tral, as the latter at that very moment 
had demonstrated that she did not con- 
sider herself bound by any treaty, when 
military interests seemed to her to make 
the breach of such treaty advisable. In 



Letter to a German 55 

the face of Germany's violation of Bel- 
gian neutrality, how could England 
have felt assured that, if an arrange- 
ment between the two countries had 
been effected, it would be respected by 
Germany, in case at any given moment 
it might appear to the German Govern- 
ment to be requisite from the point of 
view of military necessity or even mere 
advantage, to ignore such agreement? 

You call it a hideous crime and eter- 
nal shame that the English "called to 
their aid" against you the Japanese and 
the Indians. 

As far as Japanese military aid is 
concerned, it has been practically lim- 
ited to action in China, and thus has not 
to any material degree influenced the 
European war. 

And with regard to the relatively in- 
considerable nimiber of Indians that 
England brought over, the simple fact 



56 Eight Above Race 

is that these few brigades or divisions 
form part of the small standing army 
that she possessed — the very smallness 
of which is further proof of how httle 
she had contemplated war. In her 
critical situation, and with her great 
lack of trained troops, she called in 
these detachments which were com- 
manded by English officers. 

I feel certain that an imprejudiced 
judgment can see neither crime nor 
shame in that act. If there were, you 
would be no less subject to reproach for 
accepting the mihtary aid of Turks and 
Arabs. 

5. When a coimtry in so short a time 
has made such unexampled progress as 
Germany, and through her own capac- 
ity and the favor of fate has achieved 
so much of wealth, power and well- 
being for her people, she can well afford 



Letter to a German 57 

to indulge in the luxury of modesty and 
a conciliatory disposition. 

A nation thus blessed ought to 
thank God that all is going so well with 
her, and should recognize that such bril- 
liant success is bound to produce a cer- 
tain amount of irritation and jealousy, 
just as it does in the case of an emi- 
nently successful individual. 

While rejoicing in her achievement, 
she ought carefully to refrain from 
boasting or flaunting her superiority in 
the face of the world. 

While unceasingly continuing to 
strive and build up, she ought to do so 
tactfully and with all possible consider- 
ation for her less successful neighbors. 

She should know how to restrain her- 
self and wisely to keep her ambitions 
within bounds; to live and let live; to 
regard without jealousy or envy, pos- 



58 Right Above Race 

sessions which are the heritage of others 
less efficient than herself; and to leave 
it to time, slowly but surely, to do its 
work in rewarding merit and punishing 
inefficiency and sloth. 

Have you thought and acted thus? 

Have you not, on the contrary, in the 
justified consciousness of your greater 
efficiency and more strenuous effort al- 
lowed the fact of the great inherited 
advantages possessed by others to be- 
come a thorn in the flesh, and an ever 
rankhng bitter grievance, which 
dimmed your contentment and soured 
the joy at your achievements? 

Have you not estranged and af- 
fronted and antagonized other nations 
— ^not by success in open competition 
with them, which I grant was far from 
pleasing them, but to which in the end 
they had come to accommodate them- 
selves as to an unavoidable evil — ^but by 



Letter to a German 59 

the manner and matter of your writing, 
speaking and acting? Have you not 
made such nations your enemies by 
thrusting before them aims and visions 
of the future, calculated to arouse in 
them most serious alarm and apprehen- 
sion, and thus eventually caused them to 
unite against you — not, as you think, 
through envy or hate, but through the 
much more powerful motives of self- 
preservation, and of fear of your aims 
and intentions ? 

In this letter, which, I am sorry to 
say, has assumed formidable propor- 
tions, I have tried, next to expressing 
my own convictions, to represent to 
you, as I see them, what are at this 
time the predominant and control- 
ling views and sentiments among the 
American people. I have met with 
much the same ideas among the great 
majority of neutrals with whom I have 



60 Right Zihove Race 

discussed the subject — neutrals from 
many countries whom I have met here 
in the last six months. 

If I have expressed myself freely, 
in some respects even bluntly, I hope 
you will make allowance for the 
honest and deep anger and grief that 
move me when I see how, through a 
needless war wantonly started, Ger- 
many and England-France, the three 
countries of Europe whom the world 
most needs, the three races from whom 
humanity has most to expect, are en- 
gaged in tearing one another to pieces 
in senseless fury. 

I have welcomed with hope certain 
signs in the last few weeks which seem 
to indicate that more moderate, fairer 
and calmer sentiments, a more correct 
understanding, and more far-sighted 
views are beginning to get a foothold in 
certain circles in Germany. 



Letter to a German 61 

You have so incontestably vindicated 
the prowess of your arms, and so im- 
pressively demonstrated the power, 
courage, self-sacrificing patriotism and 
high ability of your nation, that no 
possible suspicion can attach to you of 
yielding under compulsion, should you 
rise to the moral heroism of taking the 
first step towards dispelling the dread- 
ful misery which weighs upon Europe 
through this appalling war. 

What is done, is done. The guilt 
will be adjudged by history. Eleven 
months ago it was you who spoke the 
fateful word that meant war. Will it 
now be you to first speak the redeeming 
word that shall bring hope of peace? 

Whether such a word from you — a 
word, not of victorious peace, but of 
righteous peace, a word of human feel- 
ing and of political moderation, of con- 
ciliation, aye, and of atonement where 



62 Right Above Race 

due — would now be listened to by your 
opponents, in view of their bitterness at 
your actions and their mistrust of your 
intentions, and would actually bring 
peace, I do not know. 

But of this I am sure: that such a 
step would be welcomed with gratitude, 
gladness and sympathy by all at least 
of the non-combatant nations, and that 
it would be set down as a moral asset for 
you in the ledger both of history and of 
contemporary opinion. Nor can I 
doubt that, even regarded merely from 
the point of view of politics, it would be 
wise, well-judged and timely. 

Yours sincerely, 
(Sgd.) Otto H. Kahn. 
* * * 

Note: To this letter a short note merely of 
acknowledgment was received, containing the 
intimation that, in view of the wide divergence 
of views between the writer and the recipient, 
no useful purpose could be served by continuing 
the correspondence. 



AMERICANS OF GERMAN 
ORIGIN AND THE WAR 



Extracts from an address before The Merchants 

Association of New York at its Liberty 

Loan Meeting June 1, 1917 



AMERICANS OF GERMAN 
ORIGIN AND THE WAR 

WE have met to-day in pursuance 
of a high purpose, a purpose 
which at this fateful moment is one and 
the same wherever, throughout the 
world, the language of free men is 
spoken and understood. 

It is the purpose of a common deter- 
mination to fight and to bear and to 
dare everything and never to cease nor 
rest until the accursed thing which has 
brought upon the world the unutterable 
calamity, the devil's visitation of this 
appalling war, is destroyed beyond all 
possibility of resurrection. 

That accursed thing is not a nation, 
but an evil spirit, a spirit which has 

65 



66 Right Above Race 

made the government possessed by it 
and executing its abhorrent and bloody- 
bidding an abomination in the sight of 
God and men. 

What we are now contending for by 
the side of the splendidly brave and 
sorely tried Allied Nations, after infinite 
forbearance, after delay which many of 
us found it hard to bear, are the things 
which are amongst the highest and most 
cherished that the civilized world has 
attained through the toil, sacrifices and 
suffering of its best in the course of 
many centuries. 

They are the things without which 
darkness would fall upon hope, and 
life would become intolerable. 

They are the things of humanity, 
liberty, justice and mercy, for which 
the best men amongst all the nations — ■ 
including the German nation — have 
fought and bled these many generations 



Americans of German Origin 67 

past, which were the ideals of Luther, 
Goethe, Schiller, Kant, and a host of 
others who had made the name of Ger- 
many great and beloved until Prus- 
sianism came to make its deeds a by- 
word and a hissing. 

This appalhng conflict which has 
been drenching the world with blood is 
not a mere fight of one or more peoples 
against one or more other peoples. 

It goes far deeper. It challenges 
the soul and conscience of the world. 
It transcends vastly the bounds of racial 
allegiance. It is ethically fundamental. 

In determining one's attitude to- 
wards it, the time has gone by — if it 
ever was — ^when race and blood and in- 
herited affiliations were permitted to 
count. 

A century and a half ago Americans 
of English birth rose to free this coun- 
try from the oppression of the rulers of 



68 Right Above Race 

England. To-day Americans of Ger- 
man birth are called upon to rise, to- 
gether with their fellow-citizens of all 
races, to free not only this country but 
the whole world from the oppression of 
the rulers of Germany, an oppression 
far less capable of being endured and of 
far graver portent. 

Speaking as one born of German 
parents, I do not hesitate to state it as 
my deep conviction that the greatest 
service which men of German birth or 
antecedents can render to the country 
of their origin is this: To proclaim, 
and to stand up for those great ideals 
and national qualities and traditions 
which they inherited from their ances- 
tors, and to set their faces like flint 
against the monstrous doctrines and 
acts of a rulership that has robbed them 
of the Germany they loved and in which 



Americans of German Origin 69 

they took just pride, the Germany 
which had the good will, respect and 
admiration of the entire world. 

I do not hesitate to state it as my 
solemn conviction that the more unmis- 
takably and whole-heartedly Americans 
of German origin throw themselves into 
the struggle which this country has en- 
tered in order to rescue Germany, no 
less than America and the rest of the 
world from those sinister forces that 
are, in President Wilson's language, the 
enemy of all mankind, the better they 
protect and serve the repute of the old 
German name and the true advantage 
of the German people. 

Gentlemen, I measure my words. 
They are borne out all too emphatically 
by the hideous eloquence of deeds which 
have appalled the conscience of the 
civilized world. They are borne out by 



70 Bight Above Race 

numberless expressions, written and 
spoken, of German professors em- 
ployed by the State to teach its youth. 

The burden of that teaching is that 
might makes right, and that the Ger- 
man nation has been chosen to exercise 
morally, mentally and actually, the 
over-lordship of the world and must and 
will accomplish that task and that des- 
tiny whatever the cost in bloodshed, 
misery and ruin. 

The spirit of that teaching, in its in- 
tolerance, its mixture of sanctimonious- 
ness and covetousness, and its self-right- 
eous assumption of a world-improving 
mission, is closely akin to the spirit from 
which were bred the religious wars of 
the past through the long and dark 
years when Protestants and Catholics 
killed one another and devastated Eu- 
rope. 

I speak in sorrow, for I am speaking 



Americans of German Origin 71 

of the country of my origin and I have 
not forgotten what I owe to it. 

I speak in bitter disappointment, for 
I am thinking of the Germany of 
former days, the Germany which has 
contributed its full share to the store of 
the world's imperishable assets and 
which, in not a few fields of en- 
deavor and achievement, held the lead- 
ing place among the nations of the 
earth. 

And I speak in the firm faith that, 
after its people shall have shaken off 
and made atonement for the dreadful 
spell which an evil fate has cast upon 
them, that former Germany will arise 
again and, in due course of time, will 
again deserve and attain the good-will 
and respect of the world and the affec- 
tionate loyalty of all those of German 
blood in foreign lands. 

But I know that neither Germany 



72 Right Above Race 

nor this country nor the rest of the 
world can return to happiness and peace 
and fruitful labor until it shall have 
been made manifest, bitterly and unmis- 
takably manifest, to the rulers who bear 
the blood-guilt for this wanton war and 
to their misinformed and misguided 
peoples that the spirit which unchained 
it cannot prevail, that the hateful doC' 
trines and methods in pursuance of 
tvhich and in compliance with which it 
is conducted are rejected with abhor- 
rence by the civilized world, and that 
the over-weening ambitions which it 
was meant to serve can never be 
achieved. 

The fight for civilization which we all 
fondly believed had been won many 
years ago must be fought over again. 
In this sacred struggle it is now our 
privilege to take no mean part, and our 
glory to bring sacrifices. 



Americans of German Origin 73 

Our one and supreme task, the one 
purpose to which all others must give 
way, is to bring this war to a successful 
conclusion. One of the means toward 
that end is to make the Liberty Loan a 
veritable triumph, an overwhelming ex- 
pression of our gigantic economic 
strength. 

To accomplish that, let each one of 
us feel himself personally responsible, 
let each one of us work as if our life de- 
pended on the result. And, in a very 
real sense, does not our national life, aye, 
our individual life depend on the out- 
come of this war? 

Would life be tolerable if the power 
of Prussianism run mad and murder- 
ous, held the world by the throat, if the 
primacy of the earth belonged to a gov- 
ernment steeped in the doctrines of a 
barbarous past and supported by a rul- 
ing cast which preaches the deification 



74 Right Above Race 

of sheer might, which despises liberty, 
hates democracy and would destroy 
both if it could? 

To that spirit and to those doctrines, 
we, citizens of America and servants, 
as such, of humanity, will oppose our 
solemn and unshakable resolution ''to 
make the world safe for democracy," 
and we will say, with a clear conscience, 
in the noble words which more than five 
hundred years ago were uttered by the 
Parliament of Scotland: 

^'It is not for glory, or for riches, 
or for honor that we fight, but 
for liberty alone which no good 
man loses but with his life" 



PRUSSIANIZED GERMANY 



From an address before the Harrisburg, Pa., 
Chamber of Commerce September 26, 1917 



PRUSSIANIZED GERMANY 

I SPEAK as one who has seen the 
spirit of the Prussian governing 
class at work from close by, having at 
its disposal and using to the full practi- 
cally every agency for moulding the 
public mind. 

I have watched it proceed with re- 
lentless persistency and profound cun- 
ning to instill into the nation the de- 
moniacal obsession of power-worship 
and world-dominion, to modify and 
pervert the mentaUty — indeed the very 
fibre and moral substance — of the Ger- 
man people, a people which until mis- 
led, corrupted and systematically poi- 
soned by the Prussian ruling caste, was 
and deserved to be an honored, valued 

77 



78 Bight Above Race 

and welcome member of the family of 
nations. 

I have hated that spirit ever since 
it came within my ken many years 
ago; hated it all the more as I 
saw it ruthlessly pulling down a thing 
which was dear to me — the old Ger- 
many to which I was linked by ties of 
blood, by fond memories and cherished 
sentiments. 

The difference in the degree of guilt 
as between the German people and 
their Prussian or Prussianized rulers 
and leaders for the monstrous crime of 
this war and the atrocious barbarism of 
its conduct is the difference between the 
man who, acting under the influence of 
a poisonous drug, runs amuck in mad 
frenzy and the unspeakable malefactor 
who administered that drug, well know- 
ing and fully intending the ghastly con- 
sequences which were bound to follow. 



Prussianized Germany 79 

The world fervently longs for peace. 
But there can be no peace answering to 
the true meaning of the word — no peace 
permitting the nations of the earth, 
great and small, to walk unarmed and 
unafraid — until the teaching and the 
leadership of the apostles of an outlaw 
creed shall have become discredited and 
hateful in the sight of the German peo- 
ple; until that people shall have awak- 
ened to a consciousness of the un- 
fathomable guilt of those whom they 
have followed into calamity and shame ; 
until a mood of penitence and of a 
decent respect for the opinions of man- 
kind shall have supplanted the sway of 
what President Wilson has so tren- 
chantly termed "truculence and treach- 
ery." 

God strengthen the conscience and 
the understanding, the will and the 
power of the German people so that 



80 Right Above Race 

they may find the only way which will 
give to the world an early peace, the 
only road which, in time, will lead Ger- 
many back into the family of nations 
from which it is now an outcast. 

From each successive visit to Ger- 
many for twenty-five years I came 
away more appalled by the sinis- 
ter transmutation Prussianism had 
wrought amongst the people and by the 
portentous menace I recognized in it 
for the entire world. 

It had given to Germany unparal- 
leled prosperity, beneficent and ad- 
vanced social legislation, and not a few 
other things of value, but it had taken 
in payment the soul of the race. It had 
made a ''deviVs bargain f 

And when this war broke out in Eu- 
rope I knew that the issue had been 
joined between the powers of brutal 
might and insensate ambition on the 



Prussianized Germany 81 

one side and the forces of humanity and 
liberty on the other; between darkness 
and light. 

Many there were at that time — and 
amongst them men for whose character 
I had high respect and whose motives 
were beyond any possible suspicion — 
who saw their own and America's duty 
in strict neutrality, mentally and actu- 
ally, but personally I believed from the 
beginning of the war, whether we liked 
all the elements of the Allies' combina- 
tion or not — and I certainly did not like 
the Russia of the Czars — that the cause 
of the Allies was America's cause. 

I believed that this was no ordinary 
war between peoples for a question of 
national interest, or even national honor, 
but a conflict between fundamental 
principles, aims and ideas. And so be- 
lieving I was bound to feel that the 
natural lines of race, blood and kinship 



82 Bight Above Race 

could not be the determining lines for 
one's attitude and alignment, but that 
each man, regardless of his origin, had 
to decide according to his judgment and 
conscience on which side was the right 
and on which was the wrong and take 
his stand accordingly, whatever the 
wrench and anguish of the decision. 
And thus I took my stand three years 
ago. 

But whatever one's views and feel- 
ings, whatever the country of one's birth 
or kin, only one course was left for all 
those claiming the privilege of Ameri- 
can citizenship when after infinite for- 
bearance the President decided that our 
duty, honor and safety demanded that 
we take up arms against the Imperial 
German Government, and by action of 
Congress the cause and the fight against 
that Government were declared our 
cause and our fight. 



Prussianized Germany 83 

The duty of loyal allegiance and 
faithful service to his country, even unto 
death, rests, of course, upon every 
American. But, if it be possible to 
speak of a comparative degree concern- 
ing what is the highest as it is the most 
elementary attribute of citizenship, that 
duty may almost be said to rest with an 
even more solemn and compelling obli- 
gation upon Americans of foreign ori- 
gin than upon native Americans. 

For we Americans of foreign ante- 
cedents are here not by the accidental 
right of birth, but by our own free 
choice for better or for worse. 

We are your fellow citizens because 
we made solemn oath of allegiance to 
America. Accepting that oath as given 
in good faith you have opened to us in 
generous trust the portals of American 
opportunity and freedom, and have ad- 
mitted us to membership in the family 



84 Bight Above Race 

of Americans, giving us equal rights in 
the great inheritance which has been 
created by the blood and the toil of your 
ancestors, asking nothing from us in 
return but decent citizenship and adher- 
ence to those ideals and principles which 
are symbohzed by the glorious flag of 
America. 

Woe to the foreign-born American 
who betrays the trust which you have 
reposed in him ! 

Woe to him who considers his Ameri- 
can citizenship merely as a convenient 
garment to be worn in fair weather but 
to be exchanged for another one in time 
of storm and stress! 

Woe to the German- American, so- 
called, who, in this sacred war for a 
cause as high as any for which ever peo- 
ple took up arms, does not feel a solemn 
urge, does not show an eager determina- 
tion to be in the very fore-front of the 



Prussianized Germany 85 

struggle; does not prove a patriotic 
jealousy, in thought, in action and in 
speech to rival and to outdo his native- 
born fellow citizen in devotion and in 
willing sacrifice for the country of his 
choice and adoption and sworn alle- 
giance, and of their common affection 
and pride. 

As Washington led Americans of 
British blood to fight against Great 
Britain, as Lincoln called upon Ameri- 
cans of the North to fight their very 
brothers of the South, so Americans of 
German descent are now summoned to 
join in our country's righteous struggle 
against a people of their own blood, 
which, under the evil spell of a dreadful 
obsession, and. Heaven knows ! through 
no fault of ours, has made itself the 
enemy of this peace-loving Nation, as 
it is the enemy of peace and right and 
freedom throughout the world. 



86 Right Above Mace 

To gain America's independence, to 
defeat oppression and tyranny, was in- 
deed to gain a great cause. 

To preserve the Union, to eradicate 
slavery, was perhaps a greater still. 

To defend the very foundations of 
liberty and humanity, the very ground- 
work of fair dealing between nations, 
the very basis of peaceable living to- 
gether among the peoples of the earth 
against the fierce and brutal onslaught 
of ruthless, lawless, faithless might; to 
spend the lives and the fortunes of this 
generation so that our descendants may 
be freed from the dreadful calamity of 
war and the fear of war, so that the 
energies and billions of treasure now 
devoted to plans and instruments of de- 
struction may be given henceforth to 
fruitful works of peace and progress 
and to the betterment of the conditions 
of the people — that is the highest cause 



Prussianized Germany 87 

for which any people ever unsheathed 
its sword. 

He who shirks the full measure of his 
duty and allegiance in that noblest of 
causes, be he German- American, Irish- 
American, or any other hyphenated 
American, be he I. W. W. or Socialist 
or whatever the appellation, does not 
deserve to stand amongst Americans or, 
indeed, amongst free men anywhere. 

He who tries, secretly or overtly, to 
thwart the declared will and aim of the 
Nation in this holy war is a traitor, and 
a traitor's fate should be his. 



THE POISON GROWTH OF 
PRUSSIANISM 



Address at a Mass Meeting in Auditorium^ Mil- 
waukee, Wisconsin, January 13, 1918 



THE POISON GROWTH OF 
PRUSSIANISM 



THE speech I am about to make 
is attuned to the spirit and the 
fact of war. 

A few days ago, as you all know, 
President Wilson once more spoke to 
this nation and to the world in a great 
and noble message of splendid vision — 
holding up a veritable beacon light of 
right and justice for all peoples. 

We all pray with eager and earnest 
hope that the German people will 
recognize the spirit and meaning of 
that lofty utterance and that, casting 
aside the odious leadership of the mili- 
tarists, they will grasp the hand 

91 



92 Right Above Race 

stretched out to them in such generous 
and unselfish meaning. 

Even as I speak the leaven of that 
great message may be working in Ger- 
many with potent effect. I have no 
information other than what you all 
have, but I hope I am not oversanguine 
in giving heed to a feeling that some 
parts of what I am going to say are 
perhaps in process of being superseded 
by events that may be forming. 

Let us all trust that it be so, and that 
we may soon be enabled to substitute 
for the harsh accents of arraignment 
and enmity the feelings and the lan- 
guage of peaceful intercourse and of 
that new relationship which the Presi- 
dent's leadership is seeking to bring 
about amongst all the nations. 

But until that "consummation de- 
voutly to be wished" is attained, let us 
take care lest we permit the hope of it 



Poison Growth of Prussianism 93 

to diminish our effort or to weaken our 
determination. Neither hope nor any- 
other motive or influence must be 
suffered for one moment to divert us 
from the stern and resolute pursuit, to 
the utmost of our capacity, of our high 
and solemn purpose as it has been pro- 
claimed in the great messages of 
America's spokesman and leader. 

• • • 

In attempting to deal with the ques- 
tions that I shall discuss, I must apolo- 
gize for using the personal pronoun a 
good deal more than would seem con- 
sonant with due modesty. My excuse 
is that whatever weight my observa- 
tions may have with you, lies mainly in 
the fact that I am of German birth, 
that until the outbreak of the war I 
kept in close touch with German men 
and affairs, that I loved the old Ger- 
many and that the conclusions which 



94j Right Above Race 

I am about to state I have reached in 
grief and bitter disappointment. 

For these reasons, also, what I shall 
say from personal knowledge and ob- 
servation and in a personal way may 
have some effect upon those among 
my fellow citizens of my own blood 
whose eyes may not have been opened 
fully to the difference between the 
Germany they knew and the Germany 
of 1914, and who, owing to insufficient 
and incorrect information, may not yet 
have discerned with entire clearness the 
path of right and duty nor perceived the 
true inwardness of the unprecedented 
tragedy which has befallen the world. 

II 

The world has been hurt within 
these past three years as it was never 
hurt before. In the gloomy and accus- 



Poison Growth of Prussianism 95 

ing procession of infinite sorrow and 
pain which was started on that thrice 
accursed day of July, 1914, the hurt in- 
flicted on Americans of German descent 
takes its tragically rightful place. 

The iron has entered our souls. We 
have been wantonly robbed of invalu- 
able possessions which have come down 
to us through the centuries; we have 
been rendered ashamed of that in 
which we took pride; we have been 
made the enemies of those of our own 
blood; our very names carry the sound 
of a challenge to the world. 

Surely we have all too valid a title to 
rank amongst those most bitterly ag- 
grieved by Prussianism, and to align 
ourselves in the very forefront of those 
who in word and deed are fighting to 
rid the world forever of that malignant 
growth. 

Heaven knows, I do not want, by 



96 Right Above Race 

anything I may be saying or doing, to 
add one ounce to the burden of the 
world's execration which rests already 
with crushing weight upon the rulers of 
Germany and their misguided people. 
Nor do I seek forgiveness for my Ger- 
man birth by demonstrative zeal in ac- 
tion or speech. 

I was and am proud of the great in- 
heritance which came to me as a 
birthright and of the illustrious con- 
tributions which the German people 
have made to the imperishable assets 
of the world. Until the outbreak of 
the war in 1914, 1 maintained close and 
active personal and business relations 
in Germany. I was well acquainted 
with a number of the leading person- 
ages of the country. I served in the 
German army thirty years ago. I took 
an active interest in furthering German 
art in America. 



Poison Growth of Prussianism 97 

I do not apologize for, nor am I 
ashamed of, my German birth. But I 
am ashamed — bitterly and grievously 
ashamed — of the Germany which 
stands convicted before the high 
tribunal of the world's public opinion 
of having planned and willed war; of 
the revolting deeds committed in Bel- 
gium and northern France, of the in- 
famy of the Lusitania murders, of 
innumerable violations of The Hague 
convention and the law of nations, of 
abominable and perfidious plotting in 
friendly countries and shameless abuse 
of their hospitality, of crime heaped 
upon crime in hideous defiance of the 
laws of God and men. 

I cherish the memories of my youth, 
but these very memories make me cry 
out in pain and wrath against those who 
have befouled the spiritual soil of the 
old Germany, in which they were rooted. 



98 Right Above Race 

I revere the high ideals and fine tra- 
ditions of that old Germany and the 
time-honored conceptions of right con- 
duct which my parents and the teachers 
of my early youth bade me treasure 
throughout life, but all the more burn- 
ing is my resentment, all the more 
deeply grounded my hostility, against 
the Prussian caste who trampled those 
ideals, traditions and conceptions in the 
dust. 

Long before the war, I had come to 
look upon Prussianism as amongst the 
deadliest poison growths that ever 
sprang from the soil of the spirit of 
man. 

When the war broke out in Europe, 
when Belgium was invaded, I searched 
my conscience and my judgment in 
sorrow and anguish, the powerful voice 
of blood arguing against the still, small 
voice of right. 



Poison Growth of Prussiamsm 99 

And it became clear to me to the 
point of solemn and unshakable con- 
viction that Prussianism, in mad in- 
fatuation, had committed the crowning 
sin of outraging and defying the con- 
science of the world and of challenging 
right to mortal combat against might, 
and that the cause which the Allies 
were defending was our cause, because 
it was the cause of peace, humanity, 
justice, and liberty (aye, liberty, even 
though Russia, then under autocratic 
rule, happened to be arrayed on that 
side, and even though diplomats and 
rulers made that sacred cause the basis 
and excuse for territorial barter and 
trade and spoils hunting) . 

In accordance with this conviction, 
— a conviction that is unshakable, — 
I have acted and spoken ever since, 
but I did not feel that it would be either 
right or fitting for me publicly to state 



100 Right Above Race 

and agitate my views so long as our 
country was neutral. 

Now, America, the never-defeated, 
has thrown her sword into the scale, be- 
cause to do so was indispensable for the 
vindication of the basic and elementary 
principles of right and peace among 
the nations, no less than for our own 
honor and our own safety, the preserva- 
tion of our institutions and our very 
destiny. 

To co-operate towards the success- 
ful conclusion of the war is the one and 
supreme duty of every American, re- 
gardless of birth, of sympathies and 
of political views. The American of 
German descent who, in this time of 
test and trial, does not serve the land 
of his adoption with the utmost meas- 
ure of single-minded devotion and with 
every ounce of his power, perjured him- 



Poison Growth of Prussianism 101 

self when he took his oath of allegiance 
and proves himself guilty of treacher- 
ous duplicity. 

Thank Heaven! the number of those 
lukewarm in their patriotism, or failing 
in loyalty, is very small indeed, far too 
small to affect the record of Americans 
of German birth for good citizenship 
and service to the country in peace and 
war. 

There is abundant evidence that the 
overwhelming majority, indeed all but 
an insignificant minority, meant what 
they said when they swore full and sole 
allegiance to America, that they will 
prove themselves wholly worthy of the 
high privilege of citizenship and of the 
generous trust of their native fellow 
citizens, and that they will not fail or 
falter under any test whatsoever. 

We will not permit the blood in our 



102 Eight Above Race 

veins to drown the conscience in our 
breast. We will heed the call of honor 
beyond the call of race. 

We will wear as a badge of honor 
the abuse and spite of those who place 
another cause, whatever it be, above 
the Nation's cause and who see hypoc- 
risy or hidden motives behind the plain 
profession of unconditional loyalty on 
the part of the American of foreign 
birth, because unconditional American 
loyalty is not in them. 

Yet, it is not enough for us Ameri- 
cans of German descent to do our duty 
by our country and fellow citizens, 
however fully and unreservedly, if we 
do it in resigned and oppressed silence. 
I believe we should speak out. We 
must give voice to our unflinching loy- 
alty and to our deep conviction of the 
justice of America's cause. 

It is hard indeed, for us to arraign 



Poison Growth of Prussiamsm 103 

publicly the country from which we 
sprang and to turn against our own 
kith and kin, however deep our detesta- 
tion of their wrongdoing under the 
spiritual and actual sway of the Prus- 
sian caste and however sincere our al- 
legiance to America. It will be easily 
understood by all fair-minded men 
that right thinking persons will shrink 
from so speaking and acting as to lay 
themselves open to the accusation of 
being time-servers or popularity seek- 
ers, and to expose their motives to mis- 
construction. 

These scruples are honorable, and 
they are felt by many whose patriotic 
loyalty and devotion are beyond all 
question. But, to my thinking, they 
are stamped out by the iron tread of 
the times. 

I believe that we should speak out, 
we Americans of German birth, because 



104 Bight Above Race 

we have been misrepresented to our 
fellow citizens and to the world by a 
small minority of professional spokes- 
men and pernicious agitators, by no 
means all of German birth. 

We must protect the German name, 
as far as it is in our keeping, in Amer- 
ica, if, alas, we cannot protect it else- 
where. 

It has always, and rightly, been an 
honored name here, and those who 
bore it have ever done their full share 
for the common weal, in the works of 
peace no less than in every crisis of the 
Nation's history. Let us do what in us 
lies to preserve the names we bear in 
honor and good standing amongst our 
fellow citizens. 

I believe that we should speak out, 
because our voices may reach the ear 
and the conscience of the German peo- 
ple when no other voices can, and be- 



Poison Growth of Prussianism 105 

cause they will reach the ear of its 
rulers. These, I know, counted upon 
the moral, if not the actual, support of 
the German-born in America to the 
extent, at least, of preventing our join- 
ing the war, and now, when we have 
joined, they count upon that support 
to agitate for an inconclusive and un- 
righteous peace. 

I believe that we should speak out to 
convince our native-born fellow citizens 
that our fundamental conceptions of 
right and wrong are like theirs, that 
the taint is not in the German blood, 
but in the system of rulership, that we 
are with them and of them wholeheart- 
edly, single-mindedly and unreservedly; 
because if we failed in conveying to 
them that conviction in the hour of our 
conmion country's stress and trial, there 
would ensue the calamity of a spiritual, 
if not an actual, breach between them 



106 Right Above Race 

and us which it would take a genera- 
tion to heal. 

Ill 

There are some of you, probahly, 
who will still find it hard to believe that 
the Germany you knew can be guilty of 
the crimes which have made it an out- 
law amongst the nations. But do you 
know modern Germany? Unless you 
have been there within the last twenty- 
five years, not once or twice, but at 
regular intervals; unless you have 
looked below the glittering surface of 
the marvelous material progress and 
achievement and seen how the soul of 
Germany was being eaten away by the 
virulent poison of Prussianism; unless 
you have watched and followed the 
appalling transformation of German 
mentahty and morahty under the ne- 



Poison Growth of Prussiamsm 107 

farious and puissant influence of the 
priesthood of power-worship, you do 
not know the Germany of this day and 
generation. 

It is not the Germany of old, the 
land of our affectionate remembrance. 
It is not the Germany which men now 
of middle age or over knew in their 
youth. It is not the Germany of the 
first Emperor William, a modest and 
God-fearing gentleman. It is not the 
Germany, even, of Bismarck, man of 
blood and iron though he was, who had 
builded a structure which, whilst not 
founded on liberty, yet was capable 
and gave promise of going down into 
history as one of the greatest examples 
of enlightened and even beneficent 
autocracy; who, in the contemplative 
and mellowed wisdom of his old age, 
often warned the nation against the 
very spirit which, alas, came to have 



108 Right Above Race 

sway over it, and against the very war 
which that spirit unchained. 

The Germany which brought upon 
the world the immeasurable disaster 
of this war, and at whose monstrous 
deeds and doctrines the civilized na- 
tions of the earth stand aghast, started 
into definite being less than thirty 
years ago. I can almost lay my finger 
upon the date and circumstances of its 
ill-omened advent. 

Less than thirty years ago, a "new 
course" was flamboyantly proclaimed 
by those in authority, and the term 
"new course" became the order of the 
day. With it and from it there came a 
truly marvelous quickening of the 
energies and creative abilities of the 
nation, a period of material achieve- 
ment and of social progress, in short, a 
national forward movement almost 
unequalled in history. The world 



Poison Growth of Prussiamsm 109 

looked on in admiration, perhaps not 
entirely free from a tinge of envy. 
Germany was conquering the earth by 
peaceful penetration; and no one stood 
in its way. It had free access to all 
the seas and all the lands. 

But with that "new course" and 
from it there also came a new god, a 
false and evil god. He exacted as sac- 
rifices for his altars the time-honored 
ideals of the fathers, and other high and 
noble things. And his commands were 
obeyed. 

There came upon the German people 
a whole train of new and baneful in- 
fluences and impulses, formidably stim- 
ulating as a powerful drug. There 
came, amongst other evils, materialism 
and covetousness and irreligion; over- 
weening arrogance, an impatient con- 
tempt for the rights of the weak, a 
mania for world dominion, and a 



110 Bight Above Race 

veritable lunacy of power worship. 
There came also a fixed and irrational 
distrust of the intentions of other na- 
tions, for the evil which had crept into 
their own souls made them see evil in 
others, and that distrust was nurtured 
carefully and deliberately by those in 
authority. 

And, finally, there came "the day" 
in which the "new course," fatally and 
inevitably, was bound to culminate. 
There came the old temptation, as old 
as humanity itself. The Tempter took 
the Prussian and Prussianized rulers 
up a high mountain and showed them 
all the riches and power of the world. 
Showed them the great countries and 
capitals of the earth teeming with peace- 
ful labor — Brussels, Paris, London, 
aye, and New York, and told them: 
"Look at these. Use your power ruth- 
lessly and they are yours." And those 



Poison Growth of Prussiamsm 111 

rulers did not say: "Get thee behind 
me, Satan;" but they said: "Lead on, 
Satan, and we shall follow thee." And 
follow him they did, and brought upon 
the green earth the red ruin of hell. 

And with rejoicing they greeted "the 
day." It was to bring them, as one 
German in an important position here 
expressed it to me, in August, 1914, "a 
merry war and victory before the year 
is out." 

IV 

Truly, history affords no parallel to 
the spiritual poisoning and the result- 
ing horrible transmutation of a whole 
people, such as Prussianism wrought 
in the incredibly short period of one 
generation. Nor would I believe that 
such a dreadful phenomenon could pos- 
sibly take place were it not for the 



112 Right Above Race 

evidence of my own eyes and my own 
ears. 

My observations led me to think, 
however, that Prussianism had reached 
the crest of its influence some years 
before the war and that liberal tenden- 
cies were beginning to make headway 
against it. 

There were many men in Germany 
before the war who were opposed to and 
saw the dangers arising from militarist 
ambition and jingo teaching and raised 
their voices against them in warning. 
There was the ever-increasing Socialist 
vote which — although Socialism in the 
German Empire does not mean what it 
means in Russia and amongst the 
extremists in our country — did mean 
opposition to Junker methods and re- 
actionary tendencies. 

I am by no means sure that the very 
growth and spread of that liberal spirit 



Poison Growth of Prussianism 113 

did not have some influence in causing 
the militarist clique to precipitate the 
war, as throughout history autocracy 
has resorted frequently to the unity- 
compelling force of war in order to 
arrest, divert and thwart liberalism and 
independence. 

To deceive the German people, and 
steel them to patriotic determination 
and sacrifice, the Prussian rulers and 
their spokesmen affirmed at the begin- 
ning of the war, and have kept re- 
affirming ever since with nauseating 
reiteration and disgusting hypocrisy, 
that theirs was a defensive war^ forced 
upon them by wicked and envious neigh- 
bors. A defensive war, indeed! 

Let me review very rapidly the cir- 
cumstances which surrounded the be- 
ginning of the war. Austria, after the 
friction of long standing between the 
two countries, which had reached its 



114 Right Above Race 

culminating point in the murder of 
the Austrian heir-apparent, sent an ul- 
timatum to Ser'bia. The conditions of 
that ultimatum, although unexampled 
in their severity and sweeping demands, 
were accepted by Serbia almost in their 
entirety. 

Austria insisted on acceptance to the 
very letter, unconditional and absolute, 
within twenty-four hours or war, where- 
upon Russia declared that, if war was 
thus forced upon little Serbia, she would 
stand by her. After much backing and 
filling, at the last minute, Austria 
shrank from the calamity of a world 
conflagration and declared herself ready 
to enter into friendly negotiations with 
Russia. The frightful danger which 
threatened the world seemed to be on 
the way of being removed. 

But the Prussian militarist party, 
seeing in their grasp the opportunity 



Poison Growth of Prussiamsm 115 

for which they had planned and plotted 
these thirty years, were not willing to 
let it go by, and they did not shrink 
from the catastrophe which was in- 
volved. 

Heretofore Austria had held the cen- 
tre of the stage and Germany had pro- 
fessed herself unable to interfere. But 
when Austria was on the point of re- 
ceding, Germany did interfere, and, on 
the plea of the menace of the Russian 
mobilization (a mobilization which there 
is reason to suspect was deliberately 
provoked through machinations from 
Berlin), started the war by an ultima- 
tum to Russia, which was tantamount 
to declaring war, on the very day on 
which Austria yielded. Let it be re- 
membered that whatever menace the 
Russian mobilization may have con- 
tained was infinitely greater against 
Austria than against Germany, and 



116 Right Above Race 

yet Austria, on the last day in July, 
1914, declared herself ready to nego- 
tiate. 

I know something from actual and 
personal experience of the plotting of 
the Prussian war party, and how for a 
full generation they had endeavored 
again and again to bring about a situa- 
tion which would force war upon the 
world. I know of my personal knowl- 
edge that the stage was set for it six 
or seven years ago in connection with 
the Agadir episode. 

I know that the Pan-Germans meant 
to have a footing in South America, 
and, once there, would have threatened 
and had prepared to threaten, this very 
country of ours. 

I know that Austria, in 1913, meant 
to conquer Serbia, and so informed her 
then ally, Italy, believing that she could 
do so with impunity. 



Poison Growth of Prussiamsm 117 

And I know that Austria did not be- 
lieve that her ultimatum to Serbia in 
July, 1914, would bring on a serious 
war. 

I know it, because the week following 
the outbreak of the war I saw a letter 
just arrived from a gentleman in high 
position in Austria, connected with 
the Austrian Foreign Office, in which, 
writing to New York under date of 
about July 20, 1914, he said: 

"We are now passing through a nerve-wear- 
ing time because of our difficulty with Serbia, 
but by the time this letter reaches you every- 
thing will be all right again. The Serbians 
have been intriguing against us these many 
years, and this time they must be settled with 
for good and all. We shall go in and take 
Belgrade, but inasmuch as we have given as- 
surance to Russia that we shall not perma- 
nently interfere with the integrity and inde- 
pendence of Serbia, and inasmuch as neither 
Russia nor her allies are ready to fight, the 
whole thing will be a military promenade and 
will have no serious consequences." 



118 Bight Above Race 

A defensive war ! Was it a defensive 
war which Prussianism was thinking of 
when it declined England's repeated 
offer for a reduction by both countries 
of the building of warships ; when it re- 
fused at the last Hague conference to 
discuss the limitation of standing armies 
and armaments; when Germany — alone 
amongst the great nations — ^rejected 
our offer of a treaty of arbitration? 

Years before the war, Nietzsche, 
than whom no man had greater influ- 
ence in shaping the trend of German 
thought in the past thirty years, 
wrote: 

"You shall love peace as a means to prepare 
for new wars. You say that a good cause may 
hallow even war, but I say to you that it is a 
good war which hallows every cause.'* 

On July 29, 1914, the well informed 
German newspaper, Vorwaerts, de- 
clared: 



Poison Growth of Prussiamsm 119 

"The camarilla of war-lords is working with 
absolutely unscrupulous means to carry out 
their fearful designs to precipitate a world 
war." 

In October, 1914, three months after 
the outbreak of the war, Maximilian 
Harden, one of the ablest and most in- 
fluential of German publicists, wrote: 

**Let us renounce those miserable efforts to 
excuse the actions of Germany in declaring war. 
It is not against our will that we have thrown 
ourselves into this gigantic adventure. The war 
has not been imposed upon us by others and 
by surprise. We have willed the war. It was 
our duty to will it. We decline to appear be- 
fore the tribunal of united Europe. We reject 
its jurisdiction. One principle alone counts and 
no other — one principle which contains and sums 
up all the others — might." 

I could go on for hours quoting sim- 
ilar views and sentiments from the 
utterances of leading German writers 
and educators before and since the 
war. It is worth mentioning, though, 



120 Right Above Race 

that Maximilian Harden has seen a new 
light, and for some time has been cour- 
ageously speaking and writing in a very 
different strain. There are a number 
of influential men in Germany who, 
like him, have undergone a change of 
mind and heart. Strong and out- 
spoken assertions of liberal sentiment 
and independent aspirations have found 
utterance in that country in the course 
of the last six months, such as have not 
been heard within its frontiers these 
many years. 

A defensive war! There are certain 
telegrams (generally unknown in Ger" 
many, even to this day) from Sir Ed- 
ward Grey, the British Minister for 
Foreign Affairs, to the British Ambas- 
sador in Germany, sent during the week 
preceding the outbreak of the war in 
Europe, which by themselves are con- 



Poison Growth of Prussianism 121 

elusive testimony to the contrary. In 
these messages, the British Foreign 
Minister went ahnost on his knees to 
beg Germany to consent to a confer- 
ence in order to avoid war. 

He went to the utmost limits in 
promising benevolent consideration for 
Germany's viewpoint and wishes, then 
and in the future, and he stated that if 
Germany would put forward any rea- 
sonable proposition honestly calculated 
to maintain peace, England would sup- 
port it with all of its influence, and if 
France and Russia would not fall in line 
England would promptly separate it- 
self from these two countries. 

These overtures and pleas met with 
no response from the Masters of Ger- 
many. They declared war. 

It is probably true that the Russian 
Pan-Slavistjs had planned war sooner 



122 Right Above Race 

or later, just as the Pan-Germans did. 
War might perhaps have come then or 
at some other time, even if the Prus- 
sian rulers had not precipitated it. 
But the fact remains that it was the 
Imperial German Government which 
did declare war. For having antici- 
pated that "perhaps," and resolved it 
according to their own plans and wishes, 
for that, their initial crime, and for 
those which followed, the rulers of the 
German people will have to answer be- 
fore the judgment seat of God and his- 
tory. Upon them rests the blood-guilt 
for this dreadful catastrophe which has 
befallen the world. 



V 



A few days ago I read a poem ad- 
dressed to Germany, of which these 
lines have remained in my memory: 



Poison Growth of Prussianism 123 

"Oh^ land of now, oh, land of then, 
Dear God, the dreams, the dreams of men! 
Enslaved, immersed in greed and hate. 
Where are the things which made you great ?** 

The things which made Germany 
great are not dead, and the world can- 
not afford to allow them to die. They 
belong to the immortal possessions of 
the human race. 

They have passed, for the time being, 
alas, out of the keeping of the mass of 
the German people, whose glorious in- 
heritance they were. 

They are now in the keeping of that 
minority, not perhaps, very great as 
yet, but growing steadily, of men in 
Germany itself from whose eyes the 
scales have begun to fall. They are in 
the keeping of all the nations who ap- 
preciate and cherish and are deter- 
mined to maintain those great and high 
things which the civilized world has 



124 Bight Above Race 

attained through the toil, sacrifice and 
suffering of its best in the course of 
many centuries. And, above all, they 
are in the keeping of the ten or fifteen 
millions of Americans of German de- 
scent. 

As that great American of German 
birth, Carl Schurz, and many other 
brave and high-minded Germans — my 
own father, I am proud to say, among 
them — in 1848 stood in arms against 
Prussian oppression, for liberal ideas 
and right and truth and freedom, so do 
we stand now. In fighting for the 
cause of America as loyal Americans, 
we are fighting at the same time for the 
deliverance of the country of our birth 
from those unrighteous powers which 
hold it enthralled and feed upon its soul. 

If ever a nation entered a war after 
having maintained infinite forbearance 
in the face of grave menace and dan- 



Poison Growth of Prussianism 125 

gers and the most intolerable affronts, 
and from motives as pure and high as 
the great blue dome of heaven, Amer- 
ica is that nation. 

We seek no reward whatsoever of a 
material nature. We seek no "place in 
the sun" — ^to use the German Chancel- 
lor's term — except the sun of liberty, 
and that we do not seek selfishly, but to 
share with all the world. 

America is not waging a war of 
vengeance, notwithstanding all the in- 
juries and measureless provocations 
that we have received. We have 
lighted a fire to purify, not to burn 
at the stake. 

America is incapable of hating an 
entire people, but we do hate, we are 
fighting and we shall fight with every 
ounce of our might, the spirit which 
has power over the people of Germany, 
and which, if it were to prevail — as, un- 



126 Bight Above Race 

der God, it never will — would destroy 
liberty, justice and plighted faith. It 
was not the people of Great Britain 
which America fought in the War of 
the Revolution, but the spirit and the 
ruling caste which then held sway over 
them. America fought then for an 
ideal and for liberty and independence, 
and sacrificed blood and treasure and 
suffered and endured and won. And 
so it will be now. 

The spirit of Prussianism and the 
spirit of Americanism cannot live in 
the same world. One or the other must 
conquer. 

In the mad pride of its contempt for 
democracy, Prussianism has thrown 
down the gauntlet to us. We have 
taken up the challenge and now stand 
arrayed by the side of the other free- 
dom-loving nations of the world, giving 
our fresh strength and our boundless 



Poison Growth of Prussianism 127 

resources to them who, heroically striv- 
ing, have borne the heat and burden of 
a dreadfully long and exhausting strug- 
gle, yet stand unwearied, erect and 
resolute. 

The enemy is of formidable strength. 
But even if he were far stronger than he 
is, even if we did not have the men and 
the means which are ours, even if our 
comrades-in-arms had not demonstrated 
their superb and indomitable prowess, 
still must our cause prevail — for there 
is fighting with us a force which has 
ever proved itself stronger than any 
other power on earth, and again and 
again has triumphed over overwhelm- 
ing odds. That force, God-inspired, 
death-defying and unconquerable, is the 
soul of man. 

And when — Heaven grant it may be 
soon! — the soul of the German people 
will have freed itself from the sinister 



128 Bight Above Race 

bondage, when it will have found again 
powers that now keep it* in ban and 
the high impulses and aims of its former 
self, when it will once more understand 
and speak the universal language of hu- 
manity and right, then, in God's own 
time there will be peace. 



FRENZIED 
LIBERTY 

THE MYTH OF 

"a kich man's WAa" 



Extracts from Address given at the University 
of Wisconsin, January 14, 1918 



FRENZIED LIBERTY 



WE are engaged in a war, an "ir- 
repressible conflict/' a most 
just and righteous war for a cause as 
high and noble as ever inspired a peo- 
ple to put forth its utmost of sacrifice 
and valor. To attain the end for which 
this peace-loving nation unsheathed its 
sword, to lay low and make powerless 
the accursed spirit which brought all 
this unspeakable misery, sorrow and 
ruin upon the world, is our one and 
supreme and unshakeable purpose. 

That is the purpose of the people of 
Wisconsin as it is the purpose of the 

131 



132 Right Above Race 

people of New York and of every other 
State in the Union. I give no credence 
to and have no patience with those who 
would measure as with a thermometer 
the loyalty temperature of our com- 
munities. 

Some dreamers there may be, here as 
everywhere, so immersed in their dreams 
that the trumpet call of the day has not 
yet awakened them. 

Some politicians there may be, here 
and elsewhere, so obsessed by the issues 
which heretofore were good election as- 
sets and so unable to shake off the in- 
veterate habits and the formulas and 
calculations of a lifetime, that they are 
unable to recognize and to share in the 
sudden flaming manifestations spring- 
ing from the deep of the people's soul 
— and after a while, looking around for 
their usual followers, find themselves in 
chilly loneliness. 



Frenzied Liberty 133 

Some there are, a small minority al- 
ways and getting smaller every day, 
among Americans of German birth or 
descent who lack the vision to see their 
duty or the strength to follow it, and 
who stand irresolute, hesitant and 
dazed. 

The vast and overwhelming majority 
have acted like true men and loyal 
Americans. They are entitled to claim 
your sympathetic understanding for 
the heartache which is theirs and they 
are entitled to claim your trust. It 
will not be misplaced. 

I am taking very little account of that 
insignificant number of men of German 
origin who, misguided or corrupt, dare 
by insidious and underground processes 
to attempt to weaken or oppose the 
resolute will of the Nation. There are 
too few of them to count and their 
manoeuvres are too clumsy to be ef- 



134 Bight Above Race 

fective. But let them be warned. 
There is sweeping through the country 
a mighty wave of stem and grim deter- 
mination, which bodes ill for anyone 
standing in its way. 

II 

One element only their is in our pop- 
ulation which does deliberately chal- 
lenge our national unity. I mean the 
militant Bolsheviki in our midst, the 
preachers and devotees of liberty run 
amuck, who would place a visionary 
class interest above patriotism and who 
in ignorant fanaticism would substi- 
tute for the tyranny of autocracy the 
still more intolerable tyranny of mob- 
rule, as for the time being they have 
done in Russia. 

If it were not for the disablement of 
Russia, the battle against autocracy 



Frenzied Liberty 185 

would have been won by now. As so 
often before, liberty has been wounded 
in the house of its friends. Liberty in 
the wild and freakish hands of fanatics 
has once more, as frequently in the past, 
proved the effective helpmate of autoc- 
racy and the twin brother of tyranny. 

Out-czaring the czar, its votaries are 
filling the prisons with their political op- 
ponents, are practising ruthless spolia- 
tion and savage oppression, and are 
maintaining their self -constituted rule 
by the force of bayonets. Riot, rob- 
bery, famine, fratricidal strife are stalk- 
ing through the land. 

The deadliest foe of democracy is not 
autocracy but liberty frenzied. 

Liberty is not fool-proof. For its 
beneficent working it demands self- 
restraint, a sane and clear recognition 
of the practical and attainable and of 
the fact that there are laws of nature 



136 Right Above Race 

which are beyond our power to change. 

Liberty can, does and must limit the 
rights of the strong, it must increas- 
ingly guard and promote the well-being 
of those endowed with lesser gifts for 
the struggle for existence and success, 
it must strive in every way consistent 
with sane recognition of the realities to 
make life more worth living to those 
whose existence is cast in the mould of 
the vast average of mankind; it must 
give political equality, equality before 
the law; it must throw wide open to 
talent and worth the door of oppor- 
tunity. 

But it must not attempt in fatuous 
recklessness to make over humanity on 
the pattern of absolute equality. If 
and when it does so attempt, it will fail 
as that attempt has always failed 
throughout history. For an inscrut- 
able Providence has made inequality of 



Frenzied Liberty 137 

endowment a fundamental law of na- 
ture, animate as well as inanimate, and 
from inequality of physical strength, of 
brain power and of character, springs 
inevitably the fact of inequality of re- 
sults. 

Envy, demagogism, utopianism, well- 
meaning uplift agitation may throw 
themselves against that basic law of all 
being, but the clash will create merely 
temporary confusion, destruction and 
anarchy, as in Russia ; and after a little 
while and much suffering, the suprem- 
acy of sanely restrained individualism 
over frenzied collectivism will reassert 
itself. 

Ill 

Under the system of wisely ordered 
liberty, combined with incentive to in- 
dividual effort whereof the foundation 
was laid by the far-sighted and enlight- 



138 Right Above Race 

ened men who created this nation and 
endowed it with the most sagacious in- 
strument of government that the wit of 
man has devised, America has grown 
and prospered beyond all other nations. 
It has stood as a republic for nearly 
a century and a half, which is far longer 
than any other genuine republic has en- 
dured amongst the great nations of the 
world since the beginning of the Chris- 
tian era. Its past has been glorious, 
the vista of its future is one of bound- 
less opportunity, of splendid fruitful- 
ness for its own people and the world, 
if it remains but true to its principles 
and traditions, adjusting their expres- 
sion and application to the changing 
needs of the times in a spirit of progress, 
sympathetic imderstanding and enlight- 
ened justice, but rejecting the teach- 
ings and temptations of false, though 
plausible prophets. 



Frenzied Liberty 139 

More and more, of late, do we see the 
very foundations of that majestic and 
beneficent structure clamorously as- 
sailed by some of those to whom the 
great republic generously gave asylum 
and to whom she opened wide the por- 
tals of her freedom and her opportuni- 
ties. 

These people with many hundreds of 
thousands of their countrymen came to 
our free shores after centuries of op- 
pression and persecution. America 
gave them everything she had to give — 
the great gift of the rights and liberties 
of citizenship, free education in our 
schools and universities, free treatment 
in our clinics and hospitals, our bound- 
less opportunities for social and mate- 
rial advancement. 

Most of them have proved them- 
selves useful and valuable elements in 
our many-rooted population. Some of 



140 Bight Above Race 

them have accomplished eminent 
achievements in science, industry and 
the arts. Certain of the qualities and 
talents which they contribute to the 
common stock are of great worth and 
promise. 

But some of them there are who have 
shown themselves unworthy of the trust 
of their fellow-citizens; ingrates, dis- 
turbers, ignorant of or disloyal to the 
spirit of America, abusers of her hos- 
pitality. 

Some there are who have been blinded 
bif the glare of liberty as a man is 
blinded who after long confinement in 
darknesSy comes suddenly into the 
strong sunlight. Blinded, they dare to 
aspire to force their guidance upon 
Americans who for generations have 
walked in the light of liberty. 

They have become drunk with the 
strong wine of freedom, these men who 



Frenzied Liberty 141 

until they landed on Americas coasts 
had tasted nothing hut the hitter waters 
of tyranny. Drunk, they ^presume to 
impose their reeling gait upon Ameri- 
cans to whom freedom has heen a pure 
and refreshing fountain for a century 
and a half. 

Brooding in the gloom of age-long 
oppression, they have evolved a fantas- 
tic and distorted image of free govern- 
ment. In fatuous effrontery they seek 
to graft the growth of their stuMed 
vision upon the splendid and ancient 
tree of American institutions. 

IV 

We will not have it so, we who are 
Americans by birth or adoption. We 
reject these impudent pretensions. 
Changes the American people will 
make as their need becomes apparent. 



142 Right Above Race 

improvements they welcome, the great- 
est attainable well-being for all those 
under our national roof -tree is their 
aim; but they will do all that in the 
American way of sane and orderly 
progress — and in none other. 

Against foes within no less than 
against enemies without they will know 
how to preserve and protect the splen- 
did structure of light and order which 
is the great and treasured inheritance 
of all those who rightly bear the name 
Americans, of which the stewardship is 
entrusted to them and which, God will- 
ing, they will hand on to their children 
sound and wholesome, unshaken and 
undefiled. 

The time is ripe and over-ripe to call 
a halt upon these spreaders of outland- 
ish and pernicious doctrines. The 
American is indulgent to a fault and 
slow to wrath. But he is now passing 



Frenzied Liberty 143 

through a time of tension and strain. 
His teeth are set and his nerves on edge. 
He sees more closely approaching 
every day the dark valley through 
which his sons and brothers must pass 
and from which too many, alas, will not 
return. It is an evil time to cross him. 
He is not in the temper to be trifled 
with. He is apt very suddenly to bring 
down the indignant fist of his might 
upon those who would presume on his 
habitual mood of easy-going good na- 
ture. 

When I speak of the militant Bol- 
sheviki in our midst as foes of national 
unity I mean to include those of Amer- 
ican stock who are their allies, comrades 
or followers — ^those who put a narrow 
class interest and a sloppy internation- 
alism above patriotism, with whom class 
hatred and envy have become a con- 
simiing passion, whom visionary obses- 



144 Right Above Race 

sions and a false conception of equality 
have inflamed to the point of irrespon- 
sibility. But I am far from meaning 
to reflect upon those who, while deter- 
mined Socialists, are patriotic Ameri- 
cans. 

I believe the Socialistic state to be an 
impracticable conception, a Utopian 
dream, human nature being what it is, 
and the immutable laws of nature being 
what they are. But there is not a little 
in Socialistic doctrine and aspirations 
that is high and noble ; there are things, 
too, that are achievable and desirable. 

And to the extent that Socialism is 
an antidote to and a check upon exces- 
sive individualism and holds up to a 
busy and self-centered and far from 
perfect world, grievances to be rem- 
edied, wrongs to be righted, ideals to 
be striven for, it is a force distinctly for 
good. 



Frenzied Liberty 145 

Still less do I mean to reflect upon 
the labor union movement, which I re- 
gard as an absolutely necessary element 
in the scheme of our economic life. Its 
leaders have acted with admirable pa- 
triotism in this crisis of the Nation, and 
on the whole have been a factor against 
extreme tendencies and irrational aspi- 
rations. 

Trades unions have not only come to 
stay, but they are bound, I think, to 
become an increasingly potent factor in 
our industrial Mfe. I believe that the 
most effective preventive against ex- 
treme State Socialism is frank, free and 
far-reaching co-operation between busi- 
ness and trades unions sobered and 
broadened increasingly by enhanced 
opportunities, rights and responsibili- 
ties. 

And I believe that a further and 
highly important element which can be 



146 Right Above Race 

counted upon in this country to stand 
against extreme and destructive tend- 
encies is the bulk of the men and 
women who are engaged in the nation's 
greatest and most vital interest, agri- 
culture, provided that the persistent 
agitation of the demagogue among the 
farming population is adequately met 
and that due and timely heed and sat- 
isfaction are given to their just require- 
ments and aspirations. 



Business must not deal grudgingly 
with labor. We business men must not 
look upon labor unrest and aspirations 
as temporary "troubles," as a passing 
phase, but we must give to labor will- 
ing and liberal recognition as partner 
with capital. We must under all cir- 
cumstances pay as a minimum a decent 



Frenzied Liberty 147 

living wage to everyone who works for 
a living. We must devise means to 
cope with the problem of unemploy- 
ment and to meet the dread advent of 
sickness, incapacity and old age in the 
case of those whose means do not per- 
mit them to provide for a rainy day. 

We must bridge the gulf which now 
separates the employer and the em- 
ployee, the business man and the. farmer, 
if the existing order of civilization is 
to persist. We must welcome progress 
and seek to further social justice. We 
must translate into effective action our 
sympathy for and our recognition of 
the rights of those whose hf e, in too 
many cases, is now a hard and weary 
struggle to make both ends meet, and 
who too often are oppressed by the 
gnawing care of how to find the where- 
withal to provide for themselves and 
their families. We must, by deeds. 



148 Bight Above Race 

demonstrate convincingly the genuine- 
ness of our desire to see their burden 
lightened. 

We must all join in a sincere and sus- 
tained effort towards procuring for the 
masses of the people more of ease and 
comfort, more of the rewards and joys 
of life than they now possess. I be- 
lieve this is not only our duty but our 
interest, because if we wish to preserve 
the fundamental lines of our present so- 
cial system we must leave nothing prac- 
ticable undone to make it more satis- 
factory and more inviting than it is now 
to the vast majority of those who toil. 
And I do not mean those only who toil 
with their hands, but also the profes- 
sional men, the men and women in mod- 
est salaried positions, in short, the work- 
ers in every occupation. 

Even before the war, a great stirring 
and ferment was going on in the land. 



Frenzied Liberty 149 

The people were groping, seeking for 
a new and better condition of things. 
The war has intensified that movement. 
It has torn great fissures in the ancient 
structure of our civiHzation. To re- 
store it will require the co-operation of 
all patriotic men of sane and temperate 
views, whatever may be their occupa- 
tion or calling or political affiliations. 

It cannot be restored just as it was 
before. The building must be rendered 
more habitable and attractive to those 
whose claim for adequate houseroom 
cannot be left unheeded, either justly 
or safely. Some changes, essential 
changes, must be made. 

I have no fear of the outcome and of 
the readjustment which must come. I 
have no fear of the forces of freedom 
unless they be ignored, repressed or 
falsely and selfishly led. 

But this is not the time for settling 



150 Right Above Race 

complex social questions. When your 
house is being invaded by burglars you 
do not discuss family questions. Let 
us win the war first. Nothing else 
must now be permitted to occupy our 
thoughts and divert our aims. 

When we shall have attained victory 
and peace, then will be the time for us 
to sit down and reason together and 
make such changes in political and so- 
cial conditions as, after full and fair dis- 
cussion, free from heat and passion, the 
enlightened public opinion of the coun- 
try deems requisite. 



II 

THE MYTH OF 
"A RICH MAN'S WAR 



SINCE Pacifism and semi-seditious 
agitation have become both un- 
popular and risky, the propagandists of 
disunion have been at pains in endeav- 
oring to insidiously affect public senti- 
ment by spreading the fiction that 
America's entrance into the war was fo- 
mented by "big business" from selfish 
reasons and for the purpose of gain. 
In the same line of thought and purpose 
they proclaim that this is "a rich man's 
war and a poor man's fight" and that 
wealth is being taxed here with undue 

151 



152 Bight Above Race 

leniency as compared to the burden 
laid upon it in other countries. 

These assertions are in flat contra- 
diction to the facts : 

Nothing is plainer than that business 
and business men had everything to 
gain by preserving the conditions which 
existed during the two and a half years 
prior to April, 1917, under which many 
of them made very large profits by fur- 
nishing supplies, provisions and finan- 
cial aid to the Allied nations, taxes were 
light and this country was rapidly be- 
coming the great economic reservoir of 
the world. 

Nothing is plainer than that any sane 
business man in this country must have 
foreseen that if America entered the 
war these profits would be immensely 
reduced, and some of them cut off en- 
tirely, because our Government would 
step in and take charge; that it would 



Myth of ''a Rich Man's War" 153 

cut prices right and left, as in fact it 
has done ; that enormous burdens of tax- 
ation would have to be imposed, the bulk 
of which would naturally be borne by 
the well-to-do; in short, that the un- 
precedented golden flow into the coffers 
of business was bound to stop with our 
joining the war; or, at any rate, to be 
much diminished. 

The best indication of the state of 
feeling of the financial community is 
usually the New York Stock Exchange. 
Well, every time a ship with Americans 
on board was sunk by a German sub- 
marine in the period preceding our en- 
trance into the war, the stock market 
shivered and prices declined. 

When, a little over a year ago, Secre- 
tary Lansing declared that we were 
"on the verge of war," a tremendous 
smash in prices took place on the Stock 
Exchange. That does not look, does 



154 Right Above Race 

it, as if rich men were particularly eager 
to bring on war or cheered by the pros- 
pect of having war? 

But, it is said, the big financiers of 
New York were afraid that the money 
loaned by them to the Allied nations 
might be lost if these nations were de- 
feated, and therefore they manoeuvred 
to get America into the war in order to 
save their investments. A moment's 
reflection will show the utter absurdity 
of that charge. 

American bankers have loaned to the 
Allied nations — almost entirely to the 
two strongest and wealthiest among 
them, France and England — about two 
billions of dollars since the war started 
in 1914. 

These two billions of dollars of Allied 
bonds are not held, however, in the 
coffers of Eastern bankers, but have 
been distributed throughout the coun- 



Myth of "a Rich Man's War" 155 

try and are being owned by thousands 
of banks and other corporations and 
individuals. 

Moreover, they form an insignificant 
portion of the total debts of the Allied 
nations; they are offset a hundredfold 
by their total assets. Even if those na- 
tions were to have lost the war it is ut- 
terly inconceivable that they would ever 
have defaulted upon that particular por- 
tion of their debt, because, being their 
foreign debt, it has a special standing 
and intrinsic security. 

It is upon the punctual payment of 
its foreign obligations that a nation's 
credit in the markets of the world 
largely depends, and the maintenance 
of their world credit was and is abso- 
lutely vital to England and France. 
Furthermore, the greater portion of 
these obligations is secured by the de- 
posit of collateral in the shape of Amer- 



156 Right Above Race 

ican railroad and other bonds, etc., 
which are more than sufficient in value 
to cover the debt. 

But let us assume for argument's 
sake that the Allies had been defeated 
and had defaulted, for the time being, 
upon these foreign debts ; let us assume 
that the entire amount of Allied bonds 
placed in America had been held by 
rich men in New York and the East 
instead of being distributed, as it is, 
throughout the country. Why, is it not 
perfectly manifest that a single year's 
American war taxation and reduction 
of profits would take out of the pockets 
of such assumed holders a vastly greater 
sum than any possible loss they could 
have suffered by a default on their Al- 
lied bonds, not to mention the heavy 
taxation which is bound to follow the 
war for years to come and the shrink- 
age of fortunes through the dechne of 



Myth of "a Rich Man's War" 157 

all American securities in consequence 
of our entrance into the war? 

Is it not perfectly manifest to the 
meanest understanding that any busi- 
ness man fomenting our entrance into 
the war for the purpose of gain must 
have been entirely bereft of his senses 
and would have been a fit subject for 
the appointment of a guardian to take 
care of himself and his affairs? 

II 

Now as to the allegations concerning 
taxation : 

1. The largest. incomes are taxed far 
more heavily here than anywhere else 
in the world. 

The maximum rate of income taxa- 
tion here is 67 per cent. In England it 
is 42% per cent. Ours is therefore 50 
per cent, higher than England's and the 
rate in England is the highest prevail- 



158 Right Above Race 

ing anywhere in Europe. Neither re- 
publican France nor democratic Eng- 
land — containing in their cabinets So- 
cialists and representatives of labor — 
nor autocratic Germany have an income 
tax rate anywhere near as high as our 
maximum rate. And in addition to the 
federal tax we must bear in mind our 
state and municipal taxes. 

2. Moderate and small incomes, on 
the other hand, are subject to a far 
smaller rate of taxation here than in 
England. 

In America, incomes of married men 
up to $2,000 are not subject to any fed- 
eral income tax at all. 

% 

In England the tax on incomes of $1^000 is 4% 
*' " " " " 1,500 is 634 
" " " " " 2,000 is 778 

(These are the rates if the income is 
derived from salaries or wages; they are 



Myth of ''a Rich Man's War" 159 

still higher if the income is derived from 
rents or investments.) 

The English scale of taxation on in- 
comes of, say, $3,000, $5,000, $10,000 
and $15,000, respectively averages as 
follows, as compared to the American 
rates for married men: 

In In 

England America 

Income tax rate on $3,000. . 14% %ofl% 

Income tax rate on 5,000.. 16% 1%% 

Income tax rate on 10,000. . 20% S%% 

Income tax rate on 15,000. .25% 5% 

(If we add the so-called "occupa- 
tional" tax, our total taxation on in- 
comes of $10,000 is 6% per cent., and 
on incomes of $15,000, 9% per cent.) 

In other words, our income taxation 
is more democratic than that of any 
other country, in that the largest in- 
comes are taxed much more heavily, and 
the small and moderate incomes much 
more lightly than anywhere else, and 



160 Bight Above Race 

incomes up to $2,000 for married men 
not taxed at all. 

3. It iS' true, on the other hand, that 
on very large incomes as distinguished 
from the largest incomes, our income 
tax is somewhat lower than the Eng-^ 
lish tax, but the difference by which our 
tax is lower than the English tax is in- 
comparably more pronounced in the 
case of small and moderate incomes 
than of large incomes. Moreover, if 
we add to our income tax our so-called 
excess profit tax, which is merely an 
additional income tax on earnings de- 
rived from business, we shall find that 
the total tax to which rich men are sub- 
ject is in the great majority of cases 
heavier here than in England or any- 
where else. 

4. It is likewise true that the Eng- 
lish war excess profit tax is 80 per cent, 
(less various offsets and allowances) 



Myth of ''a Rich Man's War" 161 

whilst our so-called excess profit tax 
ranges from 20 per cent, to 60 per cent. 
But it is entirely misleading to base 
a conclusion as to the relative heaviness 
of the American and British tax merely 
on a comparison of the rates, because 
the English tax is assessed on a wholly 
different basis from the American tax. 
As a matter of fact. Congress has esti- 
mated that the 20 per cent, to 60 
per cent, tax on the American basis 
will produce approximately the same 
amount in dollars and cents as the 80 
per cent, tax is calculated to produce in 
England. ( I know I shall be answered 
that we have twice the population of 
England and twice the wealth. But it 
must be borne in mind that a far larger 
proportion of our wealth is represented 
by farms and other non-industrial prop- 
erty and that a far larger proportion of 
our people than of the British people 



162 Right Above Race 

are engaged in agricultural pursuits 
which are not affected by the excess 
profit tax. I believe it will be found 
that the total wealth employed in busi- 
ness in America is not so greatly su- 
perior to the total wealth similarly em- 
ployed by Great Britain.) 

The American excess profit law so- 
called taxes all profits derived from 
business over and above a certain mod- 
erate percentage, regardless of whether 
or not such profits are the result of war 
conditions. The American tax is a 
general tax on income derived from 
business, in addition to the regular in- 
come tax. The English tax applies 
only to excess war profits; that is, only 
to the sum by which profits in the war 
years exceed the average profits on the 
three years preceding the war, which in 
England were years of great prosperity. 

In other words, the English tax is 



Myth of '"a Rich Man's War" 163 

nominally higher than ours, but it ap- 
plies only to war profits. The normal 
profits of business, i.e., the profits which 
business used to make in peace time, 
are exempted in England. There,, only 
the excess over peace profits is taxed. 
Our taoc, on the contrary, applies to all 
profits over and above a very moderate 
rate on the money invested in business. 
In short, our law-makers have de- 
creed that normal business profits are 
taxed here much more heavily than in 
England, while direct war profits are 
taxed less heavily. You will agree with 
me in questioning both the logic and the 
justice of that method. It would seem 
that it would be both fairer and wiser 
and more in accord with public senti- 
ment if the tax on business in general 
were decreased and, on the other hand, 
an increased tax were imposed on spe- 
cific war profits. 



164 Right Above Race 

5. Our federal inheritance tax is far 
higher than it is in England or any- 
where else. The maximum rate here 
on direct descendants is 27% per cent, 
as against 20 per cent, in England. In 
addition to that we have State inherit- 
ance taxes which do not exist in Eng- 
land. 

6. Of her total actual war expendi- 
tures (exclusive of loans to her Allies 
and interest on war loans) , England has 
raised less than 15 per cent, by taxa- 
tion (France and Germany far less), 
while America is about to raise by taxa- 
tion approximately 28 per cent, of her 
total war requirements (exclusive of 
loans to the Allied nations and of the 
amount to be invested in mercantile 
ships, which, being a productive invest- 
ment, cannot properly be classed among 
war expenditures). 



Myth of ''a Rich Man's War"" 165 

III 

Much is being said about the plausi- 
ble sounding contention that because a 
portion of the young manhood of the 
Nation has been conscripted, therefore 
money also must be conscripted. Why, 
that is the very thing the Government 
has been doing. It has conscripted a 
portion, a relatively small portion, of 
the men of the Nation. It has con- 
scripted a portion, a large portion, of 
the incomes of the Nation. If it went 
too far in conscripting men, the coun- 
try would be crippled. If it went too 
far in conscripting incomes and earn- 
ings, the country would likewise be crip- 
pled. 

Those who would go further and con- 
script not only incomes but capital, I 
would ask to answer the riddle not only 
in what equitable and practicable man- 



166 Right Above Race 

ner they would do it,* but what the 
Nation would gain by it? 

Only a trifling fraction of a man's 
property is held in cash. If they con- 
script a certain percentage of his posses- 
sions in stocks and bonds, what would 
the Government do with them? 

Keep them? That would not answer 
its purpose, because the Government 
wants cash, not securities. 

Sell them? Who is to buy them 
when everyone's funds are depleted? 

If they conscript a certain percentage 
of a man's real estate or mine or farm or 
factory, how is that to be expressed and 
converted into cash? 

* It is true that a few years ago a capital levy 
was made in Germany, but the percentage of 
that levy was so small as to actually amount to 
no more than an additional income tax^ and 
that at a time when the regular income tax in 
Germany was very moderate as measured by the 
present standards of income taxation. 



Myth of ''a Rich Man's War" 167 

Are conscripted assets to be used as a 
basis for the issue of Federal Reserve 
Bank Notes? That would mean gross 
inflation with all its attendant evils, 
dangers and deceptions. 

Would they repudiate a percentage 
of the National debt? Repudiation is 
no less dishonorable in a people than in 
an individual, and the penalty for fail- 
ure to respect the sanctity of obligations 
is no different for a nation than for an 
individual. 

The fact is that the Government 
would gain nothing in the process of 
capital conscription and the country 
would be thrown into chaos for the time 
being. The man who has saved would 
be penalized; he who has wasted would 
be favored. Thrift and constructive 
effort, resulting in the needful and 
fructifying accumulation of capital 



168 Right Above Race 

would be arrested and lastingly discour- 
aged. 

I can understand the crude notion of 
the man who would divide all posses- 
sions equally. There would be mighty 
little coming to anyone by such distri- 
bution and it is, of course, an utterly 
impossible thing to do, but it is an un- 
derstandable notion. But by the con- 
fiscation of capital for Government use 
neither the Government nor any indi- 
vidual would be benefited. 

A vigorously progressive income 
tax is both economically and socially 
sound. A capital tax is wholly un- 
sound and economically destructive. 
It may nevertheless become necessary 
in the case of some of the belligerent 
countries to resort to this expedient, 
but I can conceive of no situation likely 
to arise which would make it necessary 
or advisable in this country. More 



Myth of ''a Rich Man's War" 169 

than ever would such a tax be harmful 
in times of war and post-bellum recon- 
struction, when beyond almost all other 
things it is essential to stimulate pro- 
duction and promote thrift, and when 
everything which tends to have the op- 
posite effect should be rigorously re- 
jected as detrimental to the Nation's 
strength and well-being. 

There is an astonishing lot of hazy 
thinking on the subject of the uses of 
capital in the hands of its owners. The 
rich man can only spend a relatively 
small sum of money unproductively or 
selfishly. The money that it is in his 
power to actually waste is exceedingly 
limited. The bulk of what he has must 
be spent and used for productive pur- 
poses, just as would be the case if it 
were spent by the Government, with 
this difference, however, that, generally 
speaking, the individual is more pains- 



170 Bight Above Race 

taking and discriminating in the use of 
his funds and at the same time bolder, 
more imaginative, enterprising and 
constructive than the Government with 
its necessarily bureaucratic and routine 
regime possibly could be. Money in 
the hands of the individual is continu- 
ously and feverishly on the search for 
opportunities, i.e., for creative and pro- 
ductive use. In the hands of the Gov- 
ernment it is apt to lose a good deal of 
its fructifying energy and ceaseless 
striving and to sink instead into placid 
and somnolent repose. 

Taxation presupposes earnings. 
Our credit structure is based upon val- 
ues, and values are largely determined 
by earnings. Shrinkage of values nec- 
essarily affects our capacity to provide 
the Government with the sinews of war. 

There need not be and there should 
not be any conflict between profits and 



Myth of "a Rich Man's War'' 171 

patriotism. I am utterly opposed to 
those who would utilize their country's 
war as a means to enrich themselves. 
Extortionate profits must not be toler- 
ated, but, on the other hand, there 
should be a reasonably liberal disposi- 
tion toward business and a willingness 
to see it make substantial earnings. To 
deny this is to deny human nature. 

Men will give their lives to their coun- 
try as a matter of plain and natural 
duty; men, without a moment's hesita- 
tion, will quit their business and devote 
their entire time and energy and effort 
to the affairs of the Nation, as a great 
many have done and every one of 
us stands ready to do, without any 
thought of compensation. But, gener- 
ally speaking, men will not take busi- 
ness risks, will not venture, will not be 
enterprising and constructive, will not 
take upon themselves the responsibili- 



172 Right Above Race 

ties, the chance of loss, the strain, the 
wear and tear and worry and care of 
intense business activity if they do not 
have the prospect of adequate monetary 
reward, even though a large part of 
that reward is taken away again in the 
shape of taxation. 

IV 

Reverting now to the subject of the 
conscription of men, I know I speak 
the sentiment of all those beyond the 
years of young manhood when I say 
that there is not one of us worthy of the 
name of a man who would not willingly 
go to fight if the country needed or 
wanted us to fight. But the country 
does not want or call its entire manhood 
to fight. It does not even call anywhere 
near its entire young manhood. It has 
called, or intends to call in the imme- 



Myth of ''a Rich Man's War'' 173 

diate future, perhaps 25 per cent, of its 
men between 20 and 30 years of age, 
which means probably about 4 per cent, 
of its total male population of all ages. 
In other words, it calls only for such 
number of men as appears indicated 
by the needs of the country, and as cor- 
responds to a prudent estimate of the 
task before it. 

I am far from meaning to compare 
the loss of income or profits with the 
risk of life or health to which men on 
the firing line are exposed, or to com- 
pare financial sacrifices to those will- 
ingly and proudly borne by the youth 
of our land and shared by those near 
and dear to them. But I do believe it 
to be a just contention — not in the in- 
terest of the individual, but of the wel- 
fare of the community — that the same 
principle which is applied in the case 
of the conscription of men should hold 



174 Bight Above Race 

good for the conscription of income or 
profits; i.e., so much thereof should be 
taken by the State as is required by a 
prudent estimate of the task before it 
and as best promotes the accomplish- 
ment of that task, bearing in mind that 
the preservation of the country's eco- 
nomic power is next in importance for 
winning the war to its military power. 
Vindictiveness, extremist theories and 
demagogism ought to have no place in 
arriving at that estimate. 

I have no patience with or tolerance 
for the "war profiteer," as the term is 
understood. The "war hog" is a nui- 
sance and an ignominy. He should be 
dealt with just as drastically as is pos- 
sible without doing damage to national 
interests in the process. But neither 
have I patience with or tolerance for 
the man who would use his country's 
war as a means to promote his pet 



Myth of "a Rich Man's War" 175 

theories or his political fortunes at the 
expense of national unity at a time 
when we should all be united in mutual 
good will and co-operative effort. 

And if we do talk about the formula, 
"conscription of men — conscription of 
wealth," let it be understood that we 
have called less than 5 per cent, of the 
Nation's entire male population, but 
have called from incomes, business prof- 
its and other imposts falling princi- 
pally on the well-to-do, approximately 
90 per cent, of our war taxation, not 
to mention the contribution to the Red 
Cross, the Y. M. C. A. and other war 
relief activities. 

Let me add in passing that the chil- 
dren of the well-to-do have been taken 
for the war in proportionately greater 
numbers than the children of the poor, 
because those young men who are 
needed at home to support dependents 



176 Right Above Race 

or to maintain essential war industries 
are exempted from the draft. 

Moreover, to an overwhelming de- 
gree the sons of the well-to-do have not 
waited to be conscripted. They have 
volunteered in masses — a far greater 
percentage of them than those in less 
advantageous circumstances. That is 
merely as it should be. Having greater 
advantages, they have corresponding 
duties. Not having dependents to take 
care of, they can better afford to volun- 
teer than those less fortunately situ- 
ated. 

But the patriotic zeal of the sons of 
the well-to-do in coming forward to of- 
fer their lives to the country does give 
a doubly false and sickening sound to 
the ranting of the agitator who would 
arouse class hatred — who calls this "a 
rich man's war and a poor man's fight" 
when an overwhelming percentage of 



Myth of ''a Rich Man's War'' 111 

the sons of the men of means have 
eagerly and freely offered themselves 
for military service, when the draft ex- 
emption regulations, discriminate not, 
as in former wars, in favor of the rich 
man's son hut in favor of the poor wom- 
an's son, and when capital and business 
pay more than four-fifths of our war 
taxation directly and a large share of 
the remaining one-fifth indirectly. 

I do not say all this to plead for a 
reduction of the taxation on wealth, or 
in order to urge that no additional taxes 
be imposed on wealth if need be. 
There is no limit to the burden which, 
in time of stress and strain, those must 
be willing to bear who can afford it, 
except only that limit which is imposed 
by the consideration that taxation must 
not reach a point where the business 
activity of the country becomes crip- 
pled, and its economic equilibrium is 



178 Right Above Race 

thrown out of gear, because that would 
harm every element of the common- 
wealth and diminish the war-making ca- 
pacity of the Nation. 



The question of the individual is not 
the one that counts. The question is 
not what sacrifices capital should and 
would be willing to bear if called upon, 
but what taxes it is to the public advan- 
tage to impose. 

Taxation must be sound and wise and 
scientific, and cannot be laid in a hap- 
hazard way or on impulse or according 
to considerations of politics. Other- 
wise, the whole country will suffer. 
History has shown over and over again 
that the laws of economics cannot be de- 
fied with impunity and that the result- 



Myth of ''a Rich Man's War" 179 

ing penalty falls upon all sections and 
classes. 

I realize but too well that the burden 
of the abnormally high cost of living, 
caused largely by the war, weighs heav- 
ily indeed upon wage earners and still 
more upon men and women with mod- 
erate salaries. I yield to no one in my 
desire to see everything done that is 
practicable to have that burden light- 
ened. But excessive taxation on cap- 
ital will not accomplish that; on the 
contrary, it will rather tend to intensify 
the trouble. 

We men of business are ready and 
willing to be taxed in this emergency 
to the very limit of our ability, and to 
make contributions to war relief work 
and other good causes, without stint. 
The fact is that, generally speaking, 
capital engaged in business is now being 



180 Right Above Race 

taxed in America more heavily than 
anywhere else in the world. We are 
not complaining about this; we do not 
say that it may not become necessary 
to impose still further taxes ; we are not 
whimpering and squealing and agitat- 
ing, but — we do want the people to 
know what are the present facts, and we 
ask them not to give heed to the dema- 
gogue who would make them believe 
that we are escaping our share of the 
common burden. 

May I hope that I have measurably 
succeeded in demonstrating that the al- 
legations with which the propagandists 
of disunion have been assailing the pub- 
lic mind are without foundation in fact. 
And may I add, in conclusion, that the 
charge of "big business" having fo- 
mented our entrance into the war is 
one* which, apart from its intrinsic ab- 
surdity, is a hateful calumny. Busi- 



Myth of "a Rich Man's War'' 181 

ness men, great or small, are no differ- 
ent from other Americans, and we re- 
ject the thought that any American, 
rich or poor, would be capable of the 
hideous and dastardly plot to bring 
upon his country the sorrows and suf- 
ferings of war in order to enrich him- 
self. 

Business men are bound to be exceed- 
ingly heavy financial losers through 
America's entrance into the war. 
Every element of self-interest should 
have caused them to use their utmost 
efforts to preserve America's neutral- 
ity from which they drew so much profit 
during the two and a half years before 
April, 1917. Every consideration of 
personal advantage commanded men of 
affairs to stand with and support the 
agitation of the "peace-at-any-price" 
party. They spurned such ignoble 
reasoning; they rejected that affiliation; 



182 Bight Above Race 

they stood for war when it was no longer 
possible, with safety and honor, to main- 
tain peace, because they are patriotic 
citizens first and business men after- 
ward. 

The insinuation that "big business" 
had any share in influencing our Gov- 
ernment's decision to enter the war is an 
insult to the President and Congress, a 
libel on American citizenship, and a ma- 
licious perversion or ignorant miscon- 
ception of the facts. Those who con- 
tinue to circulate that insinuation lay 
themselves open to just suspicion of 
their motives and should receive neither 
credence nor tolerance. 



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